Where Are You (I Can't Find My Way Home)
by hparrott97
Summary: Steve's mom calls the bond a miracle—a gift from God. Steve doesn't know much about miracles, but in church he's told that miracles are extraordinary gifts. He's told that he should be grateful. All Steve knows is that Tony is his best friend.


They say you can tell a baby has a bond if its moods don't match up. A bouncing, bubbly baby with laughter on its face one moment could become a screaming, contorted mass of rage and tears the next. But all babies are unpredictable—just as unpredictable as the bonds—and nothing is certain.

Most parents watch for the signs anyway, hoping their child will have a bond. Some see signs where there aren't any; some give up early, jaded or cynical or bitter because they never had a match of their own; others don't look at all.

o.O.0.O.o

For Howard and Maria Stark, proud new parents of Anthony Edward Stark, the possibility of a bond doesn't even enter their minds. Maria holds her son when he's born, dutiful even in an empty hospital room with her husband halfway across the world. She looks into his eyes and sees a reflection there, but not of herself.

The next day she places her son in the arms of a stranger and strolls impassively away from the screaming protests of a baby who knows nothing but a mother who doesn't want him.

It's not the last time she holds him, but it might as well be.

o.O.0.O.o

(When he's six Tony asks Steve what it's like to be held by a mother. The next time his mom hugs him, Steve sends a wave of the feelings—home, warmth, happiness—to Tony. It will be the first time Tony knows unconditional love.

But not the last.)

o.O.0.O.o

A month and six days later, Steven Grant Rogers is born to a grieving Sarah Rogers. He is small and weak for a baby, even for one who came into the world four and a half weeks too early. They keep him in the hospital for a long time, even after he's out of the incubator and breathing on his own. They tell his mother he will probably always have health problems, that he will be small and weak not just as a child, but as an adult—if he survives that long.

They don't think he'll survive that long.

When she is finally allowed to, Sarah holds her son tight to her chest and cries. Steve lies still as heavy tears hit his cheeks and stares up in wonder at the woman who will love him until her last breath.

o.O.0.O.o

(Two thousand miles away, one-month-old Tony Stark smiles in his sleep.)

o.O.0.O.o

It's Tony's nanny who notices the strange behavior. He's been crying too long, in sickness or pain or something else entirely, even after being fed and changed and held. A doctor is called to the mansion that day. He runs test after test, Howard yelling for results and Maria looking surreptitiously the other way as their son is poked and prodded and cries and cries.

The first doctor finds nothing. Another is called in. And another. Money is thrown in all directions, but no one can find any solution.

"There is nothing physically wrong with him," the fourth doctor finally says. "There are a couple of possibilities. He could be mentally ill, though it is rare in children so young. This would cause him to see things, possibly, that are scaring him—"

"My son's brain is fine," Howard interrupts, his voice barring any argument. "What else."

The doctor hesitates. "It could be a bond."

o.O.0.O.o

(When Steve is healthy and Tony is the one dying, Steve asks him if this was what Tony felt like all the time when they were young—the aching pain everywhere, the phantom knowledge that someone is suffering. Tony doesn't answer, just chugs green sludge and stares, despondent, at the black lattice inching across his chest.)

o.O.0.O.o

Sarah isn't aware her son has a bond until he tells her. It's not for lack of attention or affection, but Steve doesn't express emotion easily, too weak to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. It's not until the first word out of his mouth is not "Momma" or "doggy" or any of the other words she'd been painstakingly trying to teach her son, but "Tony," that she begins to suspect.

When he has a few more words at his disposal, she asks him about Tony and the smile that breaks out across Steve's face is radiant. She hopes that whoever Tony is, he will make her son happy. She's wondered before, if she and Joe would have had more luck if they'd had a bond, if their story would have been less of a tragedy, if her boy would have had a father alive today if a dying marriage hadn't scared her husband into a war so bloody even those at home could feel the tremors of terror.

o.O.0.O.o

(The bond doesn't stop Steve and Tony's story from being a tragedy. It just helps make the tragedy seem worth it.)

o.O.0.O.o

There is no more talk of a bond in the Stark household. Tony must adjust to whatever pain is ailing him, because the endless screaming drops off slowly to nothing as months pass. By the time a year goes by and he's babbling words longer than any one year old should know, the bond is all but forgotten.

Because a bond means an unknown entity in the Stark family. It means someone to distract Tony from his track towards CEO of Stark Industries, the company Howard built from the ground up with nothing but twenty dollars and a mind too sharp for his own good. It means a match with someone most likely ill-suited to high society. It means a weakness to be exploited by any with a means to use it.

There is no more talk of a bond, but there are whispers, there are doubts. And there is Howard's disappointment.

o.O.0.O.o

(Howard's disappointment becomes a living entity for Tony, when he's old enough to fear it. It's always there, thrumming under the surface of their relationship, even after the man has been in the ground for years.)

o.O.0.O.o

When Steve is four, he realizes his family is different than others. Other kids have mothers _and_ fathers and get to play outside instead of getting sick every time the flowers bloom. He watches them through his bedroom window and asks Tony if he gets to play outside.

 _Lisa doesn't like it when I get my clothes dirty_ , is Tony's answer.

Lisa, Steve knows, is Tony's nanny, the woman who takes care of him. Steve asked him once why Tony's mom doesn't take care of him and Tony got really sad, so he doesn't ask anymore.

Steve's mom explained Tony to him a little while ago. She said that he's very lucky to have Tony, that not many people have a bond—called it a gift from God, a miracle. Steve doesn't know much about miracles, but in church he's told that miracles are extraordinary gifts. He's told that he should be grateful.

All Steve knows is that Tony is his best friend.

o.O.0.O.o

(They won't always be best friends. Sometimes they'll be less—but eventually they'll be more.)

o.O.0.O.o

No one explains the bond to Tony, but he listens when Steve's mom explains, takes the memory into his own mind and holds it close. Tony doesn't know anything about God besides what he gets from Steve's mind and the way Lisa sometimes moves her hands across her chest and whispers His name reverently.

At four, Tony knows nothing of God, but sneaks away for long enough to build his first circuit board.

Tony started school a few weeks ago, but it's boring. He already knows how to count and read, and the teacher speaks with that too-slow speech adults use around him, and always smiles wide and fake. Tony is really good at telling real smiles from fake ones. He brags about it to Steve one day, who admits he's never seen a fake smile. Tony wonders at that, because his mother's smiles are always fake and the only one who will sometimes turn a rare real smile his way is Jarvis, and the old butler doesn't smile easily.

It's Jarvis who finds him in one small room among hundreds in the mansion, crouched over his little circuit board with the guts of a computer splayed out before him. Howard is in a meeting again, but when he gets home Jarvis nudges Tony forward to show his father what he's made. And his father doesn't exactly smile, but that confident smirk is definitely real.

They pose for the magazine together, Howard's hand firm on Tony's shoulder and a smile (fake) leveled at the camera. Tony can't remember the last time his dad touched him for longer than a few seconds. He's rarely home, and when he is he shuts himself in his study, which Tony isn't allowed to enter. Tony thinks this is something like neglect, because the parents of the children in his books say "I love you," and hold them at night.

But Tony knows he should be grateful. Steve doesn't have a dad, and Tony does.

o.O.0.O.o

(Sometimes he wonders if that's really true, because Howard doesn't act like a father. Later, he'll remark that he wasn't a father, but a figurehead—someone posing as one because it looked good to the media and he had an heir. It'll take a long time for that bitterness to leave Tony.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve learns soon after his sixth birthday that his body is an enemy.

The other kids in his class are racing at recess on the blacktop behind the school, and it's fall so Steve is allowed to join them. His allergies are bad in summer, worse in spring, and the winter gives him chills that never leave, but fall is safe as long as he wears a sweater. They're racing, and he wants to race, too, so he gets in line behind his classmates, all of them nearly a head taller than the little blond swimming in his clothes and with holes in his shoes.

When it's his turn, he toes the crooked chalk edge of the starting line and crouches in a ready stance. The kids around him are whispering, but all Steve can hear is Tony cheering him on from where he sits silently in a classroom across the country.

Someone shouts "Go!" and Steve's off. He runs faster than he ever knew he could, the pavement hard and unyielding under his feet and the wind whipping past his face and stinging his eyes and he's smiling, grinning, freer than ever before—

There's a tightness in his chest, familiar, and the next time he takes a breath it doesn't reach his lungs. Panic sets in then, but he's almost at the finish line, so close. He chokes on the next breath, the pressure on his chest pushing him back away from the finish. His feet stop their rhythm, slowing as he gasps for air that isn't coming, and he falls, his knees hitting the pavement but he can't feel the impact because _he can't breathe there's no air there's something sitting on his chest and he can't move he can't breathe he can't breathe he can't breathe_ —

Sweet oxygen floods into him from his inhaler. He comes back to himself, his teacher holding him and his classmates gathered in a loose circle around them. He can feel Tony's panic, a loud _!?_ in his mind, but even that doesn't block out the whispers surrounding him.

It's not until later, when Steve is sitting in the nurse's office with his mom on the way, that he realizes his body's the problem. He can breath now, but the ache is still there. He can barely move. The nurse had to cart him off the blacktop in a wheelchair.

 _That was scary_ , Tony tells him. He's in a nurse's office, too, but his is all bright lights and white curtains while Steve's is a concrete room with a small metal desk and a single bed with the stuffing coming out on the corner.

 _I'm sorry_ , Steve replies. _I just wanted to run_.

Tony is thinking, a comforting whir in the back of Steve's mind. Steve doesn't understand Tony sometimes. The other boy is much smarter than him, Steve thinks. Steve isn't stupid—he's near the top of his class in reading—but Tony thinks in numbers and can work through problems while Steve is still just struggling to read the instructions.

 _You_ can _run_ , Tony finally says.

o.O.0.O.o

(That afternoon, Tony sits in a chair in the kitchen while Jarvis reprimands him. He swings his legs and hangs his head, but thinks it was worth it for the whoop of joy Steve let echo across the bond when he dodged a particularly priceless vase.)

o.O.0.O.o

That winter, Tony builds his first engine.

This time he does have his father's help, but only because Tony got bored of computers and began dissecting household appliances instead. Howard brings him down to his workshop and Tony's eyes grow wide as everything he never knew he wanted is revealed to him. He relays the images to Steve as he goes, of the fancy computers, the glistening shine of tools scattered across all available surfaces, the various projects half-started or half-finished or mostly abandoned laying wherever there's spare room.

Howard sits him down in front of a workbench in the corner of the room. He places a toolbox on the table. "These are your tools," he says. He points at something sitting next to the desk. "That is an engine," he says. "Take it apart and build it better," he says.

Tony sits in that workshop all weekend, only interrupted when Jarvis or Lisa brings him food, and works on the engine. He doesn't know what anything is called, but he sees how the parts fit together, how they make a greater whole and what that whole is capable of. He sees how he can make that whole capable of more.

When he's finished he poses with his father again for the magazine. This time he isn't grateful for his father, but for the workshop and for the feeling of metal and oil under his fingers.

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve spends that whole weekend with an anxious buzzing in the back of his mind, worried when he can't get clear thoughts from Tony's end. It won't be the last time one has lost the other, but it gets no easier.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve and Tony discover the concept of money together when they're eight. Steve is in the hospital again after a particularly bad bout of pneumonia and tells Tony that he overheard his mom talking to the doctors about money when they thought he was asleep.

 _Do you know what "debt" means, Tony?_ Steve asks him as the machines beep around him. The noise keeps him awake, sometimes, but the glow they give off is comforting.

And Tony, who is in the advanced class at the boarding school in Connecticut his parents sent him to that fall, answers, _It's money you owe someone_.

 _Mom told the doctor we have a lot of debt. She said she can't pay any more hospital bills. She was crying, Tony. I've never seen her cry before._

Tony is silent.

 _Tony? Tony, I'm scared_.

 _We have a lot of money_ , Tony finally says, and Steve can hear that familiar whirring in the back of his head that means Tony's brain is working overtime. _I don't know exactly how much, but I know that everyone here has a lot of money, and they say that my dad has more. We can help you, Steve._

And Steve hasn't yet developed that sense of pride that keeps him from accepting others' money, that labels it as charity and the moral do-gooding of those with too much to know what to do with it, so he says, _Please_.

o.O.0.O.o

(And Tony can never say no to Steve, not then and not later, when saying yes is like wrenching out his heart and laying it bare for him to see.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony sneaks out of his room once Steve has fallen asleep. His room is tucked towards the end of the hall, closest to the stairs in the back that lead to the laundry room. Only the older kids are allowed to go down there and they don't lead to the common area, so no one uses them. It's these stairs that Tony shuffles down now, feet silent on the concrete.

There's a phone in the basement hallway outside the laundry room they can use once a week to call home. Tony only used it once, when he first came here, but his mother got mad at him for disturbing her sleep and his father wouldn't speak to him because he was in the workshop, so Tony never called again.

He dials the number and waits as it rings once, then twice. "Stark residence, Edwin Jarvis speaking, may I ask who is calling?" the familiar English accent washes over Tony and relieves some of the phantom ache in Tony's lungs from Steve's illness.

"Jarvis, it's me," Tony whispers, hand cupping the phone's receiver.

"Tony? What are you doing up this time of night? It must be late there, nearly ten. Is something the matter? Should I get your parents?"

" _No!_ " Tony yelps before Jarvis can even finish the sentence, then continues in a hurried whisper, "Jarvis, Steve is in trouble."

Jarvis is the only one who knows about Steve. Tony learned early on not to mention the bond to his parents or to the staff. Jarvis explained to him that having a bond is complicated, that his parents mean well, and that because of their circumstances a bond is not ideal. But Jarvis says his parents "mean well" a lot, and meaning well and loving him aren't the same thing.

There's silence on the other line for a moment. Then, "You can't say that name, Tony, I told you—"

"I know, I know what you said. But Steve is in trouble, he's in the hospital and there's no money but we have money, Jarvis, I know we do, so we can send him money and it'll all be okay."

Jarvis sighs, the air sending static through the connection. "It's not that simple."

"Yes, it is, we just have to send him the money—"

"That's not how it works, Tony. Your father—"

"You don't have to ask Dad, just send the money—" And Tony's crying now, tears streaking down his cheeks, and he's aware that he's whining. He can hear Howard's voice in the back of his mind berating him for acting like a child but he doesn't care because Steve is scared.

"I'm sorry, I can't," Jarvis says, still calm.

" _Why?_ " Tony screams.

"You'll understand when you're older, Tony."

Tony hates that, hates that adults know he can do advanced algebra in his head and build an engine from scraps, but still tell him he can't understand until he's older.

"I'm sorry," Jarvis says again, then hangs up.

Tony collapses on the ground after he puts the phone down, crying so hard he wakes Steve up, and it's not fair, it's not fair that he has money and Steve is scared and he could help but he _can't_.

 _Tony, what's wrong? Tony? Tony!_

And all Tony can do is send back, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry …_

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony first starts getting an allowance when he's in college. As soon as the first check comes in he opens a bank account under a false name and fills it with thousands of dollars even though Steve won't accept it anymore. It's not until Steve is alone, only hanging on by a thread called Tony, that he finally takes the money.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve meets Bucky when he's nine and scuffed at the knees and bleeding from his nose. Tony hates when he gets into these fights, won't talk to him for hours at a time, so he's alone when a boy a head taller than him and with a scruff of unruly brown hair gets in the way of Steve's latest backyard scuffle.

For a moment Steve is convinced he's there to back the other boys up, but then he says, "Hey, you bullies, pick on someone your own size!" Steve thinks he maybe stole that line from a movie or something, because the words come out all false bravado and stilted, like he practiced them beforehand. The boys come rushing at him and he throws a punch right back, landing one right in the jaw of the biggest boy, and Steve knows the bravery, at least, isn't fake.

When it's all over, the other boys running down the alley and out of sight, the kid extends a hand, his bangs falling into his eyes. Steve ignores the hand and stands up on his own, glancing up at his savior.

"I don't need anyone to save me," he says, jaw jutting out and fight in his eyes.

"Nah, but it's nice to have someone fighting beside you." The boy grins, lopsided, and extends a hand again, this time for a shake. "James Barnes, but people call me Bucky."

Steve looks at the hand, then at this boy towering over him, and smiles. Tony's gone for the moment; it might be nice to have someone to fill the silence. "Steve Rogers," he offers, taking Bucky's hand.

o.O.0.O.o

(Bucky is eleven to Steve's nine and seems larger than life sometimes. That age difference will haunt Steve later on, when it means Bucky goes off without him while he's stuck back in Brooklyn. Tony will say he told him so, but that doesn't last, because only a few months later Steve gets a letter, and all Tony can say to that is _I'm sorry_.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony is alone at school besides Steve, and that doesn't count, really. Everyone is wary of his name, tiptoeing around him like their livelihood rests in his hands. Even if he were anyone else, his brain scares away the rest. He's the smallest boy in the class, five years younger than the rest of them, but still smarter than all of them put together.

Tony thinks, sometimes, that his brain works differently, that he's somehow not normal in a very startling way. Steve always snaps him out of those thoughts with an open invitation into his own mind.

 _See?_ he asks when Tony's holed himself up again in the dark corners of his thoughts. _My brain's not so different from yours._

It works sometimes, brings Tony down from the ledge. But other times Steve is running around with Bucky and doesn't have time to dwell in Tony's half of the bond. Tony tries not to be resentful.

He's not … He's not _jealous_ of Bucky, because Steve is Tony's. There's no way around it; they're bonded until one of them dies. So he tolerates it, let's Steve have a friend, because he's happier that way. And more than anything Tony wants Steve happy.

o.O.0.O.o

(It's not the last time that what makes Steve happy and what Tony wants don't match up. It's not the last time Tony will give up his comfort for Steve's. Steve hates it when Tony gets like that, when he locks himself up in his head away from Steve and goes on one of his self-sacrificing streaks. Because, after all, it is a two way street, this bond. Steve is happiest when Tony's happy, not just the other way around.

And Tony's almost never happy.)

o.O.0.O.o

They go through puberty together, but not at the same time.

Steve is first, and for him it's worse than for most. His body doesn't seem to know where to focus its energy; should it try and heal the sickness inside or work to make him a man? It decides on both.

So while everyone around him shoots up, Steve grows a few inches and stops unceremoniously at 5'4". Tony tells him not to worry, that it's just his body saving energy for keeping him healthy, that he would prefer Steve short and alive to tall and ten feet under.

 _And besides_ , Tony adds, _you're still taller than me_.

 _That's not much of an achievement_ , Steve shoots back.

It's true. At thirteen Tony is still barely scraping past five feet, his body still small and compact, a child's body. Steve's started to develop rough edges, his jaw sharpening, hair emerging in strange places, but Tony's still all soft, baby smooth and small. Steve knows Tony is a little jealous of him, even if he won't admit it, enough that Steve finds him sometimes in the shower or in front of the mirror searching his body for the telltale signs of adulthood.

Steve's mom sat him down the week before to tell him about how sex worked, about babies and responsibility and, most importantly, about what it means that he has a bond. Tony hears the conversation because Steve was sending weird vibes at him, awkward and uncomfortable and a little panicky, so he tuned in. He only caught snippets, but it was enough that he knew they needed to talk.

 _You're right_ , Steve admits when Tony sends him the echo of the conversation he overheard. _I was just hoping we could hold it off for longer_.

But now's as good a time as any. Tony's tinkering with something again, Steve can tell. It's best to have serious conversations when Tony has something to occupy his fingers with, when that wide expanse of a mind of his is somewhat calmer.

 _What was it she wanted you to ask me?_ Tony inquires as his hands move lightning quick over the wires. _I only heard bits and pieces_.

 _Exclusivity_.

 _Exclusivity?_

 _Yeah, you know, whether we should date other people before we meet._ Steve's nerves must translate over the bond because Tony stills.

 _What do you think?_ he asks, and the voice is quiet—as much as a voice in his head can have a volume.

And the thing is, Steve doesn't know the answer to that question. He wants Tony, that much is clear, because Tony is his everything—his best friend, his companion, his confidant. Tony has been there his entire life and Steve loves him for it. But Steve knows he's not much. He knows, intellectually, that Tony is a billionaire, that he will grow up to be CEO and invent amazing creations that will change the world. And Steve is … Well, Steve is sickly, poor, a small boy from Brooklyn with no aspirations beyond making it to adulthood.

Steve sends this jumble of thoughts to Tony, unable to find the exact words. _You should have someone else_ , he tacks onto the end.

Tony is silent, but processing. Steve can feel the hectic whirring of his brain as he filters through the info dump Steve threw at him. Then it stops. And Tony is _furious_.

 _No. No, you don't get to decide that for me. My family's already_ — _no._

 _Your family, Tony, doesn't even know I_ exist _._

 _And they never will_ , Tony says, final.

The hurt hits Steve harder than he thought it would, and Tony obviously feels it, because he's backtracking. _No, no, Steve, not like that, but they would ruin you if they could. And I can't lose you._

 _So what will you do, Tony?_ Steve asks, because he's desperate now.

 _I'll leave._

 _No._ Tony can't leave his family, his future, not for Steve, not for some quirk of biology that somehow led to their being stuck together.

 _Not right away. I'll … I'll start my own company after I graduate from college. I can do that. I'm smarter than my dad ever was, especially now._

Steve doesn't doubt that. He hasn't seen Howard Stark sober in years.

There's still doubt niggling at his brain, though, and he has to ask, _So the original question-_

 _Exclusive._

 _Exclusive?_

 _You and me only, Steve._

And if Steve smiles the entire way home from school that day—well, there's no one there but Tony to notice.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony never does leave his family. Life gets in the way of things, as it's wont to do. But it turns out he never needs to.)

o.O.0.O.o

At fourteen Tony graduates from high school.

There's no fanfare, no fuss. He doesn't even walk with the rest of his class. Something about how he's so much younger getting in the way of the other students. Tony doesn't know. But he doesn't care, either.

He's going to MIT in the fall and his dad is giving him a loft in Boston as a graduation present. Unofficially, of course. Fourteen year olds can't rent apartments, but such flimsy things as laws never stopped Howard. His mother says it's so he doesn't has to worry about flying across the country for breaks, even though they have a personal jet. More likely it's because they fired the nanny and with Jarvis retired there's no one to deal with him at home.

When he relays this to Steve, he's somewhat more concerned about the whole thing than Tony is.

 _You're living on your own? In_ Boston? _At four_ teen? _Tony, that has to be illegal._

 _Well, technically I have a handler living in the apartment below me, so._ He mentally waves off the concern Steve sends his way. _I'll be fine. I still have a meal plan on campus and it sure beats having a roommate who's four years older than me._

Steve does the mental equivalent of grumbling, which Tony takes as acquiescence.

Tony moves into the loft three and a half weeks before school starts. He tells his parents it's so he can make sure it's set up right. It has nothing to do with the way the walls of the mansion are closing in on him when he walks through its empty halls, or how the few times Tony sees his father after he gets home only result in shouting matches, or how he hasn't seen his mother since last Christmas.

The loft isn't much better than the mansion, but there are wide windows and open spaces and no mahogany or rich fabric or crown molding anywhere. He likes that the sun slants into his bedroom to ease him up in the morning, and that the gleaming kitchen faces the open expanse of the living area and the walls of windows beyond it, even though he doesn't cook.

Tony sends snippets of the loft how it is and how he envisions it will be to Steve when they're both waylaid to bed because of another of Steve's battles against his biology.

 _It's nice_ , Steve comments, and Tony preens.

He maybe has this image of Steve coming here when he graduates, of going to school in Boston while Tony gets his masters, but it's half-formed and he chucks it out of his head before Steve can see what he's thinking.

If the wave of happiness sent his way is anything to go by he isn't successful in hiding it.

o.O.0.O.o

(There's a lot Tony wishes he _could_ hide from Steve, later. But that's the thing about bonds: sharing a mind means sharing even your darkest bits.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve is excited to start high school, at first.

He doesn't expect for people to suddenly be nicer, or to propel himself into the ranks of the kids who sneak off to smoke in the bathrooms and drink at parties on the weekends, or even to excel much in his classes, but he expects … _something_. High school is supposed to be different, to be exciting and new and invigorating. All it brings for Steve, though, is the steady rot of monotony.

One of the worse days, the days when life just seems to be chugging on with him there for the ride and nothing more, Steve is slumped over the kitchen table. He has paper and a pencil in hand—because sometimes when Tony's caught up in engineering and his restlessness travels over to Steve it helps to have something to do with his hands—when Bucky walks into the apartment without even knocking. That's nothing new, though, so it's not until Bucky snatches the paper out of his hand that he looks up.

"Hey!" Steve cries, indignant, snapping up from where he was hunched over the table.

The taller brunette is staring at the paper in his hands with his eyebrows scrunched. He always gets that way when he's thinking hard about something, like in order to make his brain work he needs to engage his whole face in the endeavor. "This is pretty good."

Steve makes to grab the paper back but Bucky just holds it above his head. "Whatever, Buck, just give it back," Steve grumbles when he can't reach it.

"No, no, seriously, this is pretty amazing." He lowers the paper back down and turns it around so Steve can see it. "I mean, this is seriously realistic."

Steve squints at the work. To be honest he hadn't really been paying attention to what he'd been drawing besides the motions of his hands on the page. He looks now, though, and what he sees tinges his cheeks pink.

On the paper is the rough but clear form of two hands in motion. One hand holds what looks like a small screwdriver of sorts, which is angled into a collection of wires and gears supported by the other hand. The perspective of the sketch makes it so the viewer is looking down at the hands as though they're the one working.

"Is this your bond?" Bucky asks, pointing at the hands.

Steve nods mutely, wondering how tuned out he'd had to have been in order to unconsciously draw what Tony was seeing.

Bucky turns the paper back around to squint at it again and raises an eyebrow. "What's he working on?"

Steve pokes around in Tony's half of the bond, curious himself for the answer, but finds nothing but the familiar whirring of his brain in overdrive.

"I don't think he even knows," he answers truthfully.

Bucky laughs at that. "No. But seriously. Art classes, man. Take them," he insists, handing the paper back to Steve.

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve grumbles at first, but eventually gives in. Bucky is nothing if not insistent and when Tony and Steve's mom get on board there's nothing that can stop their combined efforts. When he brings home his first completed work, it's like light has suddenly been brought back into his life.)

o.O.0.O.o

College is … lonely.

Tony's never really had any friends at the boarding school. He kept to himself, mostly, buried himself in books and bits and pieces of torn apart appliances until he could block out the others. He was smarter than them anyway; he didn't need them to be successful.

But college is different. It's not like in boarding school where he was forced into proximity with his peers. Here he's distant, living off campus and separated by an age gap too wide to breach, stuck in the middle of puberty while everyone else is testing out adulthood. He's alone in new ways here, even with Steve a constant presence at the back of his head.

The loneliness starts to infect him.

Tony's downward spiral over the next year is not gradual. There are no warning signs or alarms blaring in his face. One day he's fine, chatting with Steve, going to classes, relishing in the oil smeared across his face and the wires splitting under his fingers, and the next he's in some stranger's bathroom, vomiting into their bathtub.

In retrospect he shouldn't have gone to the party. In retrospect he shouldn't have accepted that first drink. In retrospect he shouldn't have downed the next five. But retrospect does no good when you're stuck in the present at a party full of college kids four plus years older than you with nothing to do but drink until you can't feel the loneliness like a physical deformity in your chest.

Tony comes to with Steve's bleary, sleep addled brain calling out to his. _Tony? What are you_ — _are you okay?_

And Tony can't really respond; his head's too rattled. He only barely has enough energy to tilt his head to spit the acrid taste of bile out of his mouth and into the toilet. His throat burns and his head is still woozy. More likely than not the alcohol is still in his system.

 _Alcohol? Oh, Tony._ The wave of pity-comfort-sadness that washes over him settles some of the uneasiness in his chest. It makes him a little less alone. _Come on, let's get you out of there._

It's only with Steve's encouragement and mental nudging in the right direction that Tony manages to make it to the loft that night—morning?—and collapse on the bare mattress he still hasn't traded out for a proper bed.

But it doesn't end there.

Despite the echo of his skull pounding and the nausea in his stomach, Tony goes back. Not to the same house, but a similar one: same pounding music, same unfamiliar faces, same cheap booze. And he goes back again. And again. And again, until it's become a pattern, a habit he finds himself not bothering to try to break.

Steve tries to talk him out of it, tries to draw him away from the parties, but there's only so much he can do from a couple hundred miles away, and by then the acrid burn of vomit and alcohol in the back of his throat is a constant.

Tony is drinking a lot now, not just at parties, but during the day sometimes, too, when he can convince people he really is older than his growing body would have them believe. The drinking is recreational, fun, until it isn't. Suddenly Tony is drinking to get himself out of bed in the morning, then drinking to get himself to class, drinking to make it through his homework, drinking to help him fall asleep at night.

 _It's becoming a problem_ , Tony thinks one night he actually manages to get back to his loft before midnight. _Maybe I should stop_. But the thought is gone by morning.

o.O.0.O.o

(The drinking doesn't stop, never really stops, even when he's at his high points. It's a crutch he clenches in tight fists until the day he dies.)

o.O.0.O.o

At the same time Tony is spiraling downwards Steve is shooting up. His drawing is taking him places, places he never thought he'd be. All of a sudden there are scholarships and competitions and talk of college—something he'd never even dreamed of.

It's not that Steve wants to abandon Tony, it's that the bond makes it so that Steve has no choice; the bond makes it so he can feel the effects of the drinking. He finds himself blushing and giggling at odd intervals and standing up only to keel right back over again when suddenly the floor is not so steady. It's affecting his work, making his hands shake and his eyes lose focus, so he starts to pull away, to distance himself from Tony's half of the bond. It's a gradual process, so gradual that he doesn't even notice Tony's almost completely gone from his mind until he goes to reach across the bond and finds the distance much greater than before.

Part of him wants to pull Tony back, then, to meld their minds together like they used to when they were young and had nothing to do but lie back on their beds and let their thoughts drift across thousands of miles. But he doesn't. Because he's selfish, because he's busy, because he doesn't think it'll matter, come a few months. Tony will phase out of it, Steve's life will calm down, and they'll go back to being SteveandTony, one person meshed together from two heads, two bodies, two minds.

o.O.0.O.o

(Later Steve will look back and wonder why he didn't notice what was happening to them until it was all over, but then he'll remember the look on his mom's face when he brought back the winnings from his first art competition and understand all over again.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony meets James Rhodes at one of the house parties when he's fifteen.

It's been a year of drinking and partying and blackouts and he only really remembers bits and pieces of it. He's still going to classes, he thinks, still acing tests even when hammered or hungover or a little bit of both. His second year at MIT started just a few months ago and already he's on track to graduate the following year. His advisor was very proud of him when he announced it, called Tony a prodigy destined to do great things. Tony, drunk at the time, had just giggled at that, finding the concept unbearably amusing for some reason.

So here he is, fifteen and drunk, sitting in a stranger's bathroom for the umpteenth time that month and giggling again at the memory. A year ago he would have pulled at Steve's side of the bond and let him in on the joke, but now he just sits and laughs and laughs and ignores the ache inside.

Tony traces his fingers over the lip of the bottle he'd smuggled into the room. Bathrooms had become a kind of safe haven for him. Once the people and the music became too much, once he got past that point of drunk that stopped being fun and started bringing on the familiar numbness, he'd retreat to a bathroom and tuck himself as small as possible between whatever was available: the sink and the wall, two free standing cabinets, or, like he is now, between the toilet and the bathtub.

There's a knock on the door. Tony hiccups another giggle and lolls his head to the side just in time to catch sight of the head that pops into the room. Dark eyes scan the room, eventually falling on Tony's form and widening. "Oh, uh, sorry, man," the head says—and isn't that funny, a floating head? "I'll get out of your way."

The head starts to pull the door closed, and no, that's not right, there's a hand attached to that head, and an arm beyond that, so he must be a person. A person would be really nice right about now. 

"Nooo, no, _stay_ ," Tony manages, his tongue heavy in his mouth. "C'mere. Join the party." He pats the tub next to him in invitation and watches with bleary eyes as the older boy shifts his eyes between Tony, then the bottle in his hand, then the empty tub. He doesn't sit in the tub like Tony wants, but he inches the door back open, slipping more of himself through the opening.

"You are very drunk," the guy states needlessly. Tony knows that, because the floaty feeling is still there and the numbness has just started and he can't feel the emptiness in his head where Steve should be. "Do you have someone who can get you home?" He pauses. Walks in a step further. Narrows his eyes at Tony. "How old are you?"

"Fif-fifteen," Tony slurs. He eyes the bottle in his hands for a moment. Takes a swig.

"Jesus," the guy swears under his breath. He sighs then, running a hand over his head and stepping fully into the bathroom. "Did whoever you're visiting really just leave you here? Who is it? Brother? Sister?"

Tony scrunches his eyes at the bottle. "M'not visiting. 'M a student."

"Here? At MIT?" When Tony nods he asks, "You one of those genius types?"

Tony nods again. If he were more sober he might be afraid of coming off too arrogant, but as it is he barely registers the conversation at all.

The guy sighs again, then walks forward another couple steps and extends a hand. "Come on, kid."

Tony stares at the hand, trying to force his eyes to focus. It's a nice hand, dark skinned and not covered in cuts and burns from working with machines all day like Tony's, or smudged with charcoal dust like Steve's. He realizes after a moment that the guy wants him to take his hand, wants to help him. Tony blinks at it, then shifts his eyes back down to the bottle. He can't grab the hand unless he puts the bottle down. He blinks again, looks up at the guy's eyes, makes a decision.

"There we go," the guy says as he hefts Tony out from his little corner. Tony stumbles once he's upright, leaning against the reassuring length of the guy's side. "What's your name, kid?" he asks as they maneuver out of the bathroom.

"Tony."

"Tony. I'd say nice to meet you but I don't really like the circumstances." He smiles, but it's tight-lipped at the corners. "I'm James."

"James?"

"James Rhodes," he clarifies.

Tony nods. "Rhodey."

Rhodey looks at him sideways when they finally make it out onto the porch. Tony doesn't know how they got all the way there without him noticing. "Rhodey?"

Tony tries to string the words together. "There's another … another James. Dun like him." Bucky flashes up in his mind, him and Steve smiling together somewhere two hundred miles away. It makes his stomach cramp. He pushes the image from his mind and taps Rhodey's chest with the hand not gripping his shirt to keep himself upright. "I like you. So, Rhodey."

Rhodey shakes his head, huffs a laugh. "Okay, Tony. Where's your dorm? You far from here?"

"Not a dorm. Loft. Few blocks, thataway." Tony points in the general direction of where he thinks his loft is. Probably.

They must make it to his loft that night, somehow, because Tony remembers feeling the give of his mattress under him and someone tugging the blankets up to his chin right before he drops off into sleep.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony never really gets over the shock of waking up with Rhodey still there in the morning. He keeps blinking and expecting him to be gone. Not just that morning, but all through college, through his young adulthood and later, especially later, when everything falls apart over and over. Rhodey keeps him grounded. He doesn't keep him from going to parties or talk down to him when he makes poor choices. Instead he gives Tony a reason not to make those poor choices, gives him a friend to talk to and a hand to hold when he needs. Tony's pretty sure Rhodey is the only reason he survives college.)

o.O.0.O.o

Partway into his junior year Steve finds himself in the hospital for four days after his worst asthma attack since middle school. For the first few days his chest aches so much that each breath he draws rattles his lungs. The doctors tell him he shouldn't talk, so he lies there and listens to Bucky when he comes to visit or his mom when she's off her shift and sketches between doses of his meds.

But the problem with sketching without a purpose is that his mind wanders. The gentle _scritch-scratch-scritch_ of pencil on paper interrupted by the steady beeping of the machines around him lulls him enough that his mind begins to stretch out for the first time in months. Without even meaning to, he reaches out across Tony's half of the bond and finds him in his bed at the loft, propped up on pillows and rubbing absentmindedly at his chest. Even with their recent distance the severity of Steve's attack must be hurting him. He's talking to someone, someone Steve doesn't recognize but feels that he should, because if Tony trusts him enough to bring him back to the loft then he must know him fairly well. If there's one thing Tony isn't, it's quick to trust.

 _Tony?_

It's been awhile since he's tried this, so he's not entirely sure it goes through until he hears Tony's shocked response.

 _Steve?_

 _Yeah, hi_ , Steve answers almost shyly.

 _Been awhile, huh?_ Tony remarks, and for the first time in a long time Steve can feel the bitterness in Tony's words.

 _Yeah. We've been busy_.

 _Right_. _This you?_ He sends the echo of the pain in his chest, itself just a reverberation of Steve's own pain.

 _Yeah, sorry._ And Steve feels the familiar twinge of guilt that reappears whenever Tony gets waylaid by Steve's pain.

 _Not your fault_. But Tony says it by rote, and it doesn't carry the wave of comfort it used to.

" _Tony? You okay, man?"_ It takes Steve a moment to realize that the words aren't coming from his room, but from the guy sitting with Tony.

" _Yeah, just holding a conversation in my head. You know, usual bond stuff."_

Tony told someone about him? That's … he's never told anyone about the bond before, as far as Steve can remember. Tony has always held the secret close to his chest, taught by his parents that their bond was a dirty thing to be shoved deep down and forgotten. Steve can't help the jealousy that rises up at that thought.

 _Really?_ Tony addresses him again. The words are punctuated by the image of Steve and Bucky laughing together.

" _He's talking to you? I thought-"_

" _Yeah, so did I."_

 _Who's that?_ Steve asks before the other man can respond.

Tony doesn't answer in words, but instead sends him a torrent of memories of the past year. It takes Steve several minutes to process it all, running through them like high speed movies, scanning for the content he needs. Rhodey. This man, Rhodey, has been there for Tony. He's helping Tony with the drinking, keeping him safe. Relief washes through Steve like a breath of fresh air.

 _Relieved you can carry on guilt free now that you know I have a proper babysitter?_ Tony asks him, the words thrown across the bond like acid.

 _What? No, Tony, I'm just glad you're safe and in good hands._

 _Right, 'cause you were so concerned before_.

 _I've always been here, Tony_ —

 _No, not really, though. 'Cause you disappeared for months, going off to draw your little sketches and win your little competitions. Newsflash: life isn't perfect on this end._

Steve can't help the wave of anger that comes, then. _Oh, so what? The moment I find something I'm good at and actually_ like _doing Mr. Billionaire Genius Tony Stark can't handle it? I think you're just too used to being the one winning all the awards. You're_ jealous _._

 _Jealous? Really? You really think I have time to be jealous while I'm over here at fucking MIT learning the skills that will support us? Your art won't do diddly squat to get you money, no matter how good you are._

 _We both know that's a load of bull, Tony. You get millions in allowance money. You could drop out tomorrow and go crying home to daddy and be set for life. You're not working for anything other than to satisfy your own need to be the best at everything._

 _At least I have a dad._

White hot rage burns through Steve, and the words that come next send all that rage flying across the bond with them.

 _At least the family I do have actually loves me._

o.O.0.O.o

(Those words will haunt Steve and Tony both for years down the line. Every argument will bring them up, picking at scars not quite healed until they bleed again. In the moment, though, Steve feels a wall, solid and impregnable, descend down on the bond, slamming into him with a force so palpable he audibly gasps, his hand drawing a jagged line across his sketch. When he's had a beat to recover he probes at the bond and feels only the faintest assurance that Tony is alive somewhere in response. Otherwise, he is entirely cut off.

Suddenly Steve feels very alone in that hospital room.)

o.O.0.O.o

The first time Tony brings someone back to his loft it's in a desperate attempt to make Steve angry. Not consciously, of course, it's nothing so planned. But the intent is there, somewhere, to defy their promise to each other. He doesn't really want to do this, but he's sixteen and he's drunk again and he figures maybe this will change something.

But Steve doesn't even twitch when Tony brings the girl into the room, or when they stumble undressed, or when he slips into her with a stuttering gasp, or when he finishes and rolls off of her without aplomb.

And it feels good, even as his chest aches, so he does it again. And again. He brings back boys and girls alike, learns how their bodies work, how to make a girl gasp out her pleasure and a guy groan deep in his throat. It becomes as much a science as engineering, carries him through the years until at last he graduates Summa Cum Laude two weeks before his seventeenth birthday.

o.O.0.O.o

(No one comes to his graduation, not his parents, and especially not Steve. When he walks across the platform and shakes the dean's hand he gets only a polite round of applause for his efforts.)

o.O.0.O.o

Bucky approaches Steve a few weeks before the end of Steve's junior year. Bucky is graduating this year, planning to join his dad in the exciting world of electricians. Or so Steve thought.

Bucky corners him after school one day on the side of the school, leaning against the brick wall like it's any other day. It's with a smirk that he delivers the news he's joining the army, going off to fight the president's war in the Middle East.

Steve feels like he shouldn't be as surprised as he is. Because while he had always thought Bucky would be right there fighting beside him, Brooklyn was always too small for the rambunctious boy with too much energy. While Bucky's not one for discipline or following orders, he's always chased grandeur with open arms and a manic grin on his face. Staying in Brooklyn, becoming an electrician like his dad, growing up to marry and have a family—that's just not Bucky. So in the end he lets him go, waves off the taxi that drives him to the airport and onwards to bigger and better things, and tries to force away the uneasiness in his gut.

Life goes on, albeit with slightly less excitement with Bucky gone, and before he knows it junior year has come to an end.

Steve's found a summer job at the local grocery store, so he's not home when the news gets delivered. It's not until he clocks out and walks home to find his mom crying at the table holding a tear-stained letter, that he learns what's happened.

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve never does stop mourning Bucky. Even years later, living in the tower with the rest of them, he'll still be waylaid by the grief all over again. The difference is that then, in the future, he'll have Tony and everyone else besides. Right now all he has is a broken bond and a mother grieving as much as he is.)

o.O.0.O.o

After graduation Tony goes back to California for about a month. It's all he can stand before his father's drunken shouting—because he's always drunk now, has been for three years at least—and his mother's absent apathy drive him back to the loft that's always been more home than that empty mansion ever was.

But during the short time Tony's on the west coast his father takes him aside and introduces him to a few important men in the company, simultaneously shoving Tony's accomplishments in their white-whiskered faces and showing Tony the men he'll be competing with for rights to the company down the line.

Tony has no illusions that his father plans to hand him the company free of charge when he gets a few more years of study and experience under his belt. Tough love has always been Howard's game, especially when it comes to his company. No matter the outcome Tony will be creating weapons for SI—even Howard will admit his brain's up to snuff—it's just a matter of whether he'll be at the helm as well.

Most of the men whose clammy hands Tony shakes that afternoon leave his brain as quickly as they come. But a few stick there, namely one Obadiah Stane. Stane holds his hand solidly, his full beard shaking as he congratulates Tony. He says, "Call me Obie," and Tony hesitates at first, but tries it at his insistence and finds the name fitting. Obie is around almost the entire month Tony's back home, flitting around the mansion, discussing business in Howard's office, walking with Maria in the gardens. He's serious and counterbalances Howard's moods with his own levelheadedness. Tony finds he likes having Obie around, likes a constant in his life that's not someone blocking him out or screaming at him or pretending he doesn't exist.

So when he travels back to Boston to start his post grad studies, it's Obie he keeps in contact with. It's Obie who teaches him business smarts and how to schmooze like the best of them. It's Obie who helps him set up the workshop in a warehouse a few blocks from his apartment building.

It's in that warehouse that he builds Dummy, his first AI. And maybe Dummy is a little special, a little less than the perfect lab assistant Tony had intended, but when he comes online for the first time and tilts his claw at Tony like a lost puppy he can't help the smile that creeps across his face.

When Tony gets the award his father calls him for the first time since he's been away. Obie even flies out to see the ceremony. Tony is happier than he's been in a long, long time.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony will look back at his time with Obie later and see the obvious hand of manipulation. He got Tony exactly where he wanted him, indebted to him and distant from his family. He'll wonder how he missed it, sometimes, how he could have let himself be tricked for so long. Steve will remind him, then, that when you're alone you take anything you can get.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve is in class at the art school two blocks from his house when he gets the news.

She'd been on the decline for months, he tells himself. There was nothing he could do, he tells himself. But still it hits him hard when he's standing in the cold metal of the morgue and staring at the blank face of his mother. She's barely the woman he remembers anymore. The long blonde hair she'd always kept despite constantly complaining that it got in her way is long gone, fallen out when she first started the chemo. The skin of her face is pulled taut against her cheekbones, sallow and grey, and her eyes are sunken back into her skull, the bags under them a prominent and deep purple.

Steve is nineteen as he gazes blankly at his mother's grave. She couldn't be put to rest next to his father because he's in the veteran's section of the graveyard, so she's alone.

And Steve's alone, too, no more Bucky or mom or even Tony, who sits in the back of his mind, undetectable besides the occasional blip of emotion fighting its way through the walls they've each erected. Not for the first time Steve wonders if he should've gone to Boston to study like he and Tony dreamed of all those years ago, back when they were fourteen and foolish.

Almost unconsciously Steve taps against the mental barricade, but he gets no response on the other end.

He hasn't cried yet. It seems almost pointless; her death was a long time coming. But now, sitting hunched over in front of what remains of his mother, he feels the tears start to fall. Once the first one hits the damp earth they come faster, sluicing across his face in torrents as little sobs wrack his body.

Eventually Steve will get up and go to class. Eventually he'll go home to his empty apartment. Eventually he'll pick up the shattered pieces of his life and pile them back together into some facsimile of a routine.

But for now he's just that too-small boy again, and he cries before his mother's grave.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony does feel the tap. He's in the middle of a lecture on AI programming and when the little ping hits the back of his mind he stutters to a stop. He resumes the lecture before any of his students can comment on the pause, but as he recites the familiar lecture by rote a single tear tracks its way down his cheek.)

o.O.0.O.o

The hunger is all-consuming.

Even as Tony has just finished eating, stuffed full of carbs and sugar and everything else that makes up a meal, his stomach cramps, clawing at him from the inside, demanding more and more. It's the most disconcerting feeling to have your stomach stretched full of food even as it audibly rumbles a proclamation of its emptiness. He gains four pounds before finally going to the doctor, who tells him it could be a parasite or a brain tumor and terrifies Tony for weeks before all the tests come back negative.

But the hunger persists, lasts nearly ten weeks until he's at the store picking up his protein bars and red bull when the world shifts on its axis and suddenly he's no longer contemplating granola bar flavors but wondering why he's lying on the floor staring at the harsh luminescent lights of the grocery store's ceiling.

He wakes up later in the hospital, hooked to an IV and surrounded by beeping machines. A nurse sees him awake then, tells him that they don't know what's wrong, that he collapsed at the store. Does he remember his name? What year it is? The current president?

Tony answers the flurry of questions and tries to sit up, but black spots appear at the edge of his vision and his head pounds in time with his heartbeat. The hunger is still there, low in his stomach, but more of a persistent ache than actual cramping. Instead it's the throbbing in his head and the dull ache of his bones that is most prevalent, and below all that, eerily familiar, is thick pressure in his chest, as though a weight is crushing down onto it.

A doctor comes then, holding a very official looking clipboard. The files that Tony had sent for from California in light of the stomach cramping have apparently arrived, and the doctor scans them now, her eyes darting over the paper with a speed Tony can only rival when it's binary laid in front of him.

"You have a bond," she finally addresses him, and Tony starts with the bluntness of the words.

"Is that—does it say that in my file?" he asks, legitimately curious, because his parents are still steadfastly ignoring its existence. He never knew it was put on record.

"Yes," she answers, "and I believe it's the cause of your discomfort, Mr. Stark. Or, rather, your bond's discomfort."

Tony stares at her, the thick fogginess in his head making it difficult to concentrate on her words.

She ticks down her list. "Dizziness, stomach cramping, headache, aching chest, all without a single physical indication of their existence. Your MRI came back clean, the results of your blood tests were normal for a man your age, the x-ray of your chest showed no fluid or swelling of the airways, and your CT scan was flawless. Simply stated, it's all in your head.

"If you were unbonded I would advise you to seek psychiatric help," she adds, "but as it is I would say these symptoms are not yours, but your bond's."

It's not unusual, the circumstances; far too often as a child Tony had been waylaid to a bed because of Steve's chronic illnesses. But for it to happen now, with them so far apart both mentally and physically, is strange. In the time—what is it now? Three years?—since they last spoke Tony hasn't felt a single twinge of discomfort. He voices his concerns.

The doctor purses her lips at him, but answers without comment. "In the case of estrangement, this type of exchange of illness would usually be practically nonexistent. But you have to remember that a bond is meant to serve not only as a meeting of two souls, but as an evolutionary safeguard. If one is in trouble the other will know. A chronic illness or mild cold would not affect you, but these symptoms point to starvation and exhaustion. Your bond is simply overriding the blocks you've put in place to alert you to the potential danger to your bond's life."

The gaze she levels at him now is sympathetic. "I would advise you to contact your bond and see what's ailing him. If it's serious enough you might need to make the proper preparations. Death in a bond—"

"He won't die," Tony interrupts, the words spilling forth before he even knows he's saying them. "He won't."

o.O.0.O.o

(To Tony's constant frustration Steve's life is never really entirely safe. Whether he's fighting another infection or heading off to save the world, Tony never stops worrying for him. It becomes a physical ache that bounces between them, eventually, when they're fighting together, ricocheting back and forth until neither knows who first held it but each feeling it with equal intensity.

And every time one of them cuts it too close, every time a doctor says " You're lucky to be alive," the other will respond with a firm conviction: he will not die.)

o.O.0.O.o

When Steve first feels Tony's presence in his mind after three years of staunch separation he thinks it's a hallucination. It takes Tony reassuring him three times before he'll believe that the voice in his head is not another manifestation of his fever.

 _Tony? Why_ — _what are you doing?_ Steve questions, the words heavy and hard to form.

 _I'm in the hospital_ , is the only answer he gets.

 _What? Why? What happened?_

 _I think you know why._

The wave of guilt that emcompasses Steve is overwhelming. Tony's in the hospital because of him. Again.

 _Want to tell me why you're starving over there, Steve?_

 _I'm not_ —

 _Don't lie to me._ And Tony's words are angry now, full of rage and fire and barely bitten back fury.

Steve retreats into his mind, the fever weakening his mental resolve. In his current state he can't handle the onslaught Tony's anger throws against his mind.

Tony must sense that, because he backs off. _Just show me._

And Steve does. He shows Tony Bucky's departure, the news of his death, his graduation, his mother's steady decline and her recent passing, the savings she left quickly drained to go towards hospital bills, his clumsy attempts to juggle art school and two jobs, his speedy decline as he ate less and less until at last he collapsed from the exhaustion, the fever dream he's been living for the past few days. It all leaves him and funnels into Tony's mind, where Steve can feel it being processed. He can feel Tony's pride at Steve's graduation, his pity for when Bucky died, and, surprisingly enough, deep sadness at the news of Sarah's death.

Finally Tony gets up to the present, but Steve is unprepared for the tidal wave mixture of anger-frustration-concern that washes over him.

 _Why didn't you come to me?_ he demands.

 _I don't need your charity, Tony. I can get by fine on my own._

 _Clearly not. Listen, here's the information for an account_ —Tony inserts a memory into Steve's foggy mind— _I created when I started getting an allowance. Whenever Howard direct deposits the check into my account forty percent is automatically funnelled here. I made it for you. No questions, just take it._

 _No, Tony, I won't live off of you_ —

 _You won't live at all at this rate_ , Tony interjects. _You'd really die just to keep your pride? Do you know what that would do to me? Death in a bond_ — _even estranged ones_ — _creates everlasting damage, Steve._

 _But_ —

 _Just go to a hospital. Get better. Live off the money until you get out of school, then you never have to take my money or even talk to me again._

The argument doesn't stop there, but the result is the same: Steve takes the money. When he finally agrees Tony retreats back into his own mind, building barricades in his wake as he goes, but the walls erected aren't as strong as the ones from before. Steve wonders if that was on purpose, if Tony is leaving the choice of their separation up to Steve, or if he was just lazy. If Tony is even a fraction of the person he used to be, Steve would bet on the former.

So he carefully avoids the bond when he finally has the energy to get himself up and to the hospital, but doesn't resurrect the ironclad defenses they'd had up before. The hum of the bond, bringing with it the nostalgia of a childhood spent with Tony in his mind, lulls him as he drops off to sleep in the hospital bed.

o.O.0.O.o

(When Steve finally looks at the account balance the sheer amount astounds him. Eventually he'll be able to treat money not unlike Tony does, unaware of its use or depletion, but he never quite erases that inner frugal Brooklyn boy always scraping by.)

o.O.0.O.o

Just over a year later, a car crash takes the lives of Howard and Maria Stark.

Tony is … fine, or some variation of it. People expect him to be devastated, coming up to him with their "it'll be alrights" and "they'll always be with you, you knows" until it's all Tony can do to keep from screaming at them. Why should he mourn these strangers? He doesn't even know them; they didn't raise him—he owes them nothing.

But there is a sense of loss. Not mourning, necessarily, but an emptiness. He was always reassured knowing he had a family out there, even if they were distant and terrible and more likely to shout each other hoarse than exchange any kind of affection. But now they're gone. It's like he's been sitting at a table all set with dishware and silverware and centerpieces and candles and suddenly the tablecloth is ripped out from under everything and it all goes toppling down onto him.

Everyone is all over Tony: the press, the board of trustees, the lawyers—everyone seems to want to probe him for information, opinions, stories, skillsets, accomplishments. His life story is plastered on every newspaper, featured in every talk show, painted across every magazine, all with one question at the center: Will Tony Stark take over Stark Industries?

When the lawyers read the wills, Tony is anything but surprised by the turnout. His mother had nothing of her own; she herself belonged to Howard and his company, so that reading is succinct and uneventful. But when they read off Howard's will, everyone shows up. Business partners, stockholders, journalists—everyone wants to know the fate of the company.

There's a nervous energy in the room that builds as the lawyer lists off personal effects, properties owned, assets stowed in accounts across the world, until finally he reads the words everyone has been waiting for.

"As for Stark Industries—"

The room is dead silent, as if a single breath could change the fate written on the tiny, insignificant scrap of paper.

"The full share in my name will be under custody of the current CFO of Stark Industries, Obadiah Stane, until my son, Anthony Stark, reaches the age of twenty one, at which time the share, along with title of CEO, will go to him."

A flurry breaks out in the room, but Tony isn't listening. The possibility had been there in the back of his mind, but never had he imagined that Howard would leave the company to him so soon. It feels something like approval.

Life from there is a blur. There are press conferences and interviews and board meetings and learning the company from the bottom up. The projects Tony had been working on—some patents for the company, others for his second masters, and yet others just for fun—are put on hold while he learns business. He oversees the creation of the Maria Stark Foundation, a not for profit meant to soften his image and create sympathy for the boy who just lost his parents. The only constant through it all is Obie, who is supportive and as there for Tony as he can be while he's busy running the company Tony will have a hold of in only a few months.

On top of all that is the move to California from Boston. While there is a small satellite office of Stark Industries in the Boston financial district, the future CEO needs to be at the headquarters in Los Angeles. So Tony sets to make the move. And although the hollow mansion of his youth sits only miles from the office, he decides instead to build his own mansion in Malibu. He throws himself into the project, designing a wide open layout with curves and modern edges and walls of windows like his loft. And in the basement, an expansive workshop.

It's the beginning of something, Tony thinks as he walks through the bare bones of the mansion. It hangs off a cliff and over the sea, and it's there that he stands, looking out over the waves with something close to happiness.

o.O.0.O.o

(And for a long time he is happy. He's happy as he cycles through life, gives presentations and hosts functions, accepts and presents awards, goes to meetings and designs weapon after weapon after weapon. He's happy as he fills the empty bits inside with booze and parties and sex. He's happy until he's suddenly not, then he pretends to be happy until he really can't tell the difference anymore)

o.O.0.O.o

It's raining the day Tony becomes CEO of Stark Industries.

Steve is watching the coverage of the celebration gala on the news, staring as the man he had only seen in the wayward mirror or glass pane from his own mind's eye throws an arm over the shoulder of a man with a grizzled white beard and smiles at the camera. A memory pops into his mind, one he didn't know he had, of a young Tony, four, maybe five, years old, bragging about how he could tell a fake smile from a real one. Now, at twenty one, Tony is sporting a fake smile of his own.

Steve can tell because he's seen the real thing before, the one that scrunches Tony's eyes and makes him throw his head back with the force of it, and because the bond is still open enough that he can feel Tony's moods seeping through if he pays it enough attention.

It's so strange to think that Tony is only a month older than Steve and yet he's already become CEO of a multinational company, that he creates weapons in his free time and throws millions of dollars away like tissues.

Steve sighs and picks up his pencil again, putting it to the pad resting on his lap. He's working on his senior portfolio, getting together an idea for when the real work begins the coming year. He has a shadow of an idea, one that's been poking into his mind for a few months now. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it's been poking at his mind since the day he was born.

It's Tony, in all his glory, a study of his life, his emotions in bright colors, defined and honest, and his silence in neutrals, dark shadows and hazy images. But nothing of his face, sometimes obscured in the shadows and other times turned entirely away from the viewer. It's symbolic, on the one hand, because they've never met face to face, and strategic on the other, because Tony is too high profile and hides the bond like a particularly ugly birthmark.

It's only an idea, not fleshed out and missing the attention to detail Steve prides himself on, but it's something to work towards, and that is something Steve needs more than anything at the moment.

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve will find out later that Tony visits his senior showcase, watches the shadows play across his skin, watches the colors dance across the planes of his back, with something close to pride.)

o.O.0.O.o

Life as CEO blurs together in strange ways.

There's meeting after meeting after meeting, half of which Tony doesn't bother to attend, and events and parties and galas and drinking, so much drinking, and faces melding together because he's brought so many home he can't even remember most of them and he thinks he should be worried about that but he can't garner up the energy to care. There's escaping into his workshop for hours, days at a time, even with an endless list of assistants trying and failing to pull him out to just "please go to this one meeting, Mr. Stark, it really is very important," and patents that blur together as much as the faces because he can't stop creating things, feels that maybe he can do something worthwhile with this brain of his, that maybe he will make an impact beyond his name and his company, that someone one day will have their life changed by one of his inventions, even if most of them are used for murder. He poses for magazines and struts through life with bravado and toes the line between sleaze and suave carefully because one step in the wrong direction could ruin everything he's built up.

Tony projects what he wants people to see, practices expressions in the mirror until he can laugh and smile even when smashed or hungover or dead inside from exhaustion or something else entirely. And he doesn't know what he's hiding, exactly, but he knows like he knows Dummy's base code that he can't let anyone see past the facade.

It's not living, Tony doesn't think, because he remembers what it was like to wake up and like what he was doing every day, to look forward with hopeful eyes because there was something waiting on the horizon. But it's surviving, at least, and doing it better than others, because other people don't have his money or his face or his mind and he thinks maybe that's not all it's chocked up to be, but then he thinks of Steve and how he could be dead right now if Tony didn't have what he does. And then he chucks that thought out entirely because he doesn't think about Steve, doesn't talk about Steve, doesn't want to wonder what Steve is doing with his life, even though if he concentrated enough he would know just by peering over the still-damaged walls between them.

So he cycles through life, somehow survives the first year as CEO, then the next, and the one after that, until slipping into the character of CEO Tony Stark, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, becomes as easy as breathing.

o.O.0.O.o

(When breathing becomes harder, when the metal pushes down on his chest and cuts space away from his lungs, projecting that image becomes harder, too, as though it needs to shift along with analogies made years ago. Suddenly that smile wavers, that laugh shakes, that thin line trips him up again and again. Some of it is the trauma, some of it's the stress and the suits, but most of it is Steve. Steve who hates the fake smiles and laughs. Steve whose mood turns sour every time Tony flirts with someone. Steve who sticks with him even as he flies halfway around the world because being apart burns worse than the water forcing its way down Tony's throat.

Tony never does decide whether to be grateful or spiteful for the change.)

o.O.0.O.o

Peggy Carter is not just beautiful, Steve thinks. And she is beautiful—hair done in waves, brown eyes warm and cheerful, lips rouged bright and vibrant—but she's so much more, too, brilliant and headstrong and bold all at once. She could whip a hurricane into submission, melt a blizzard with her smile, move mountains with a flick of her finger and let thunderstorms wash over her without a flinch.

Steve is walking down the street, binder of sketchbooks in hand, when he sees her for the first time. When he looks back he won't remember where he's going, because it doesn't matter later; he never makes it there, anyway. All he knows is he sees a woman pushed up against a wall in a side alley outside a bar being harassed by two men a head taller than her, and has to help. He doesn't like bullies of any kind, especially ones who prey on women in alley ways, so he comes up behind them wheezing slightly from running in from the street, makes himself as tall as possible and says, "Get away from her."

The guys turn to him, size him up, take in his too-small frame and bony limbs, the way the skin sinks into his skinny neck so his jaw sticks out sharp and gaunt and the way the set of narrow shoulders sways in the slight breeze.

"Run away, pipsqueak," one of the spits. "This doesn't concern you."

They turn back to the woman, whose wide eyes are boring into Steve with what he thinks at the time is fear, but what in retrospect is more likely thinly veiled indignance.

"I said," Steve repeats, "get away from her." And with that he takes a swing at the nearest guy, his fist catching the man's cheek as he goes to turn his head back towards Steve. The guy barely flinches at the hit, but the strike makes Steve's fist ache. He shakes off his hand as the man turns toward him moving his jaw back and forth.

"That almost hurt, pipsqueak," the guy growls, voice coming out even angrier than before. He stalks forward a step in Steve's direction and glances back at his friend to communicate something. Steve uses the brief distraction to get another hit in, this time cuffing the guy on the temple.

The guy's face has turned bright red by now, purpling even at the edges. The other guy steps forward to help his friend, who tries to wave him off. Together now they trudge forward, each posed to attack. Steve hopes the woman takes advantage of the distraction he's providing and runs away as he braces for impact.

But the impact never comes.

Instead Steve hears a high-pitched grunt and a sharp shout, then another whine, and when he looks up one of the guys is kneeling on the ground, clutching his groin, and the other is running down the alley and out onto the street. He turns incredulous eyes to the woman, who is now standing next to him, chest rising and falling with the force of her breathing.

"Next time," she pants in sharp British tones, "don't bother."

It's an argument they'll have over and over, because Steve knows—he _knows_ —she can take care of herself, that she has no need for a man skinny enough to be her forearm, but that doesn't mean he can't help, that he can't want to take care of her and be there for her. But right now his eyes just dart between her and the man on the ground in wonder.

Steve thinks, at some point over the next months, he fell in love with her right then.

They go out for coffee then, because Steve tells her he needs to apologize somehow, even if the cash padding his pockets is dwindling because he cut himself off financially from Tony when he graduated over a month ago. And one coffee turns into sitting and talking for hours because Peggy—which he learns is her name—is _interesting_ , has seen the world and lived so much more than Steve has, stuck in Brooklyn his whole life.

They meet again on and off over the next few weeks, sometimes for coffee, sometimes for dinner, other times just to walk through the streets as Steve shows her the neighborhood and she tells him stories of a country across the Atlantic, until Steve wonders offhandedly if this is dating.

He asks her one day, when they're sitting in the diner that has quickly become their favorite, if more for the straight-talking waitress Peggy lives with than the food, and she laughs and kisses him across cups of coffee and plates of greasy fries. It's his first kiss and he doesn't know whether to tell her that or not, whether to mention the bond or the loneliness he's been slowly filling with her presence, but he sees her smile and all thoughts are wiped from his mind.

So they date for a few months, which really is just doing exactly what they've been doing, only with more kissing and some holding hands and a lot of blushing on Steve's part. Because he still can't believe it, believe that this woman, this amazing, beautiful woman, ever bothered to look twice at him when she could just as easily glance over his head.

And they last for a while, long enough that Steve thinks this could be love, that he could somehow live the rest of his life without ever thinking of Tony again, even when he can feel the faint pulse of his emotions sometimes in the back of his mind.

But Peggy pulls him aside one day, kisses his nose and says, "Your heart's not really here, is it?" And he protests, because of course he does, because this woman is his all, she's all he has left, of course he loves her. But she talks him down, shakes her head and smiles like she knows Steve better than he does.

And perhaps she does.

Steve looks back later and sees what Peggy sees, the distance, the way he's trying too hard to be what he thinks he should be. He paints an illusion of loving her in his mind as he paints portraits of Tony swathed in a glow of blue on paper.

Peggy's not Tony, is the thing. She's earnest and blunt and sweet and knows nothing of engineering but has a tactical mind sharper than any master chess player. But that's all she is to him—not Tony.

So they part ways amicably, promise to stay in touch and do for a while, but slowly drift apart as Steve gets more commissions and Peggy becomes more secretive about what exactly her job is.

Steve doesn't even notice she's gone completely until he looks up one day and finds himself alone.

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve meets Peggy again, later, in Afghanistan. It's entirely by chance, but he's just getting back from another failed attempt at tracking the last remaining signs of Tony and sees her at the camp. She's married now, to Angie, the waitress, and is fighting a war like the soldier she's always been. This time they keep in touch, and when he helps save New York it's with her in mind.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony will be first to admit he's rather … _difficult_ to work with at times. It's all part of his charm, arriving late to meetings, staying up for three days straight, employing witty sarcasm to avoid confrontation: all in a day's work in Tony Stark Land.

Now, some have learned to cherish this charm. Namely, one newly minted Colonel James Rhodes, the new military liaison for Stark Industries, AKA the only guy the government could get to take the job. But Rhodey has always been a special snowflake when it comes to Tony Stark. Somehow three years in college and the seven years since haven't driven him away; Tony's not going to jinx that kind of good luck.

A personal assistant, however, has been somewhat more difficult to get his hands on.

"Six PAs in eight months, Tony," Obie tells him on one of the rare nights they both have a break from business.

"What can I say," Tony replies, taking a sip of his scotch and cherishing the burn of it down his throat, "I'm a problem child."

"That is an understatement." Obie punctuates his words by pouring another finger of scotch into his glass. "You need to tone it down, Tony, or even I'll want to leave you." The words strike a cord, but Tony chases the words down with alcohol that erases the ache in his chest.

"Aw, Obie, you know you'd miss this hot piece of ass." The brunette grins, easy and wide.

Obie glares from under bushy eyebrows and fills Tony's glass with the decanter in his hand. "Drink," he says in place of an answer. "You've been stressed lately."

So the search begins anew. Tony doesn't know where these men and women are coming from, but whoever's doing the hiring needs to step it up. The previous one had only lasted until Tony'd brought home the third hook up in as many nights and the man had thrown up on the PA's shoes.

A few days later a woman shows up at Tony's doorstep, red hair up in a ponytail, outfit impeccably pristine, and freckles spattered across her face. She introduces herself as Virginia Potts, "But everyone calls me Pepper," she adds with a smile. Tony gives her a week, max.

She ends up lasting through that first week, then the next, and then she's been there a month and Tony's getting stupidly attached and decides to fire her. A year passes with him making that conviction every morning and tossing it aside around the time Pepper walks through the door in her heels of the day and nags at him until he's suitably dressed and presentable, before finally resigning himself to his situation.

A month after that Tony hires Happy, and looks at his little cohort, Rhodey and Pepper and Happy, and finds himself surrounded by friends on his payroll. He wonders how much of their friendship is the money padding their pockets and counting the days until they can leave Tony Stark and his whining behind.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony's never had a friend he wasn't paying, besides Steve, which doesn't count because he's stuck with him. He wonders what that says about him, sometimes, that he needs to pay people to keep his company.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve is twenty six when he reaches a dead end in his life. He's in the hospital again, the third time in six weeks, when the doctors tell him.

"It's your heart," the man says, tall and clean-shaven and severe. "The strain of your chronic illnesses is wearing it down. The prospects are not good. If you keep to the regimen, stay healthy, you may last to see your thirtieth birthday."

With those words he walks out, leaving Steve with a list of medication the length of his forearm and a death sentence. He'd always known he wouldn't have a long life. His mother called him her miracle boy. "They said you wouldn't survive three years," she would tell him. "But look at you, my miracle boy, fighting on."

Steve wishes beyond all hope that he could hear say those words one more time.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony will call Steve his miracle later, after Afghanistan. He must know the context, must understand what the words will mean to Steve, so when he says them Steve knows he means it.)

o.O.0.O.o

 _You're_ dying, Tony rages, _and you waited two months to tell me?_

 _I was trying to get some things in order_ , Steve hedges.

 _And I wasn't on the top of your list?_ Tony questions. _Damn it, Steve, I can help you. I can get my doctor to look at you, or_ —

Tony cuts off abruptly, the hazy image of an idea forming in his mind, a project he's been overseeing.

 _Tony? What … What_ is _that?_

 _A miracle_ , is the only answer Tony gives.

o.O.0.O.o

(Tony doesn't know exactly what he's getting Steve into at the time, only knows that it's big and revolutionary and that he can heal Steve. All he really thinks about is healing Steve.)

o.O.0.O.o

A doctor approaches Steve later that week. He's tall, husky, the ragged edges of a greying beard and circular spectacles on his face. He calls himself Dr. Erskine.

"Mr. Stark sent me," he tells Steve, voice thick with accent. "I can make you better, give you your life back."

And Steve has nothing, nothing left to lose, and nothing really to live for, so he says yes.

o.O.0.O.o

(And that's something that will haunt Steve, too, that he said yes. In the end it was his choice. He could have blocked Tony out again, shoved him and his advice from his mind, but in the end Steve didn't want to die. There was something to say for mortality and its ability to bring out the best and worst of people. For Steve it brought out a little of both.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony oversees the procedure from afar.

It's not that he doesn't want to get his hands on it—quite the contrary, since he was the one to develop technology being used in the procedure, if not the procedure itself—but something in him is reluctant to meet Steve, even after all this time.

So Tony watches on a monitor from his office down the hall as they strap Steve—tiny, emaciated Steve—onto the bed. Something in him itches to just run there and help, to make sure nothing could possibly go wrong, but he satisfies himself with watching the instruments from here, measuring their readings on the panels before him. Instead he reaches out mentally over the still weakened walls, grasping for anything. He knows that during the process they have to be as separated as possible, but now, while the anxiety is running high for both of them and the anticipation is threatening to strain Steve's heart even further, Tony can feel justified in seeking the comfort the bond used to provide.

Relief washes over him, cool and satisfying, when Steve grasps the mental hand Tony is extending. Tony can feel Steve's nervous energy, his heart pumping, blood singing through his veins, the beads of sweat dripping down his face. But there is also a kind of excitement thrumming below it all, a belief that this could be a new opportunity, a way to give his life a greater meaning. It's that Tony latches on to, letting it wash over him and soothe his anxiety somewhat.

But then they're closing the capsule's lid, cutting off Tony's view of Steve's face, and it's time to withdraw. With one last pulse of unstated and indistinguishable emotion, they withdraw from each other's minds. Then the needles are inserted, the machine turned on, and—

The pain is excruciating, even dulled through the bond. It's like a million pinpricks across his body, pins and needles, but instead of pins and needles it's axes and knives cutting into his skin, pulling him apart at a molecular level and then expanding and multiplying and rushing through his body like a disease, taking everything that was there before and replacing it with this new version, but he's rejecting it, trying to pull away from the unfamiliar, and it's encroaching on him anyway, pulsing out from his center and washing up his chest, down his arms, his legs, to his toes, up his neck and to the tips of every individual strand of hair on his head—

And it's over. Tony wasn't aware he was screaming, but his throat is raw and scratched when he tries to swallow. He gasps for air and claws himself up into his chair again. It's a good thing, then, that he hadn't been in the room. That would have been hard to explain.

But there's something more pressing than his own discomfort, since, after all, it's not technically _his_ discomfort.

So Tony looks up at the screen just in time to see the capsule open, steam pouring out to reveal Steve behind the metal and glass cover. But it's not the Steve Tony has known for his entire life. No, this man, this is not Steve, even as Tony sees him in the lines of his face and the angle of his jaw, and the eyes, oh, the eyes are the same, a brilliant blue, but the rest of him—

This man is tall, at least six feet—certainly taller than Tony—and bursting with muscles. The pants that were hanging loose on Steve's frame before now cling to his thighs, damp with sweat. The muscles of Steve's chest ripple as he's helped out of the capsule and stands on unsteady feet. Tony can't help but remember how his ribs used to jut out through the skin, gaunt and terrifying.

Tony's mouth runs dry.

Dr. Erskine approaches, dwarfed by Steve's new form, and asks him how he's feeling.

And Steve, the goddamn idiot, says, "Taller."

o.O.0.O.o

(Steve tells Tony, once, that he sometimes wishes he were small again. The sickness, he says, he doesn't wish on anyone, but there are times that being this new him is more difficult than it was just being tiny, weak Steve. Tony can sympathize. He doesn't understand, exactly, but there is a reflection of it in his life, a clear before and after. He can understand having responsibility where you didn't before, he can understand knowing more and wishing you didn't, wishing you could go back to ignorant bliss and living life like always. But Tony would never trade the suits in for anything.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve knew what he was signing up for when he agreed to receive the serum. A government contract, special ops, missions no one else could do, a unit of men like him, stronger, faster—that was the plan.

But it all disappears when Dr. Erskine takes the bullet to the heart.

Dr. Erskine was a paranoid little man, encoding and encrypting every bit of the formula. Even Tony, who helped develop it, can't make head or tails of it. So the secrets of the serum die with the good doctor, and with it the government's dreams of an army of supersoldiers. All they have is Steve, one soldier, and not even a soldier, but a dying boy with a connection scraped off the streets of Brooklyn.

They are … displeased.

So they bench him, send him to basic training to test the limits of the serum and leave him there for five months.

Then disaster strikes. The attack on New York takes the world by surprise, and the country in a chokehold. Watching the towers fall is surreal. Feeling the ash fall like rain over Manhattan is terrifying.

With the country in mourning and an enemy across seas, the government is searching for a symbol. Steve, otherwise a waste of taxpayer dollars, they decide, is that symbol. They dress him up in red, white, and blue and stand him next to the president. Suddenly he's been promoted; they're calling him Captain America, making him pose for photo ops and shipping him across the country to spread hope in the wake of the disaster.

And Steve knows he's doing good, helping the children understand and the adults find comfort, but it still feels a bit like he's a puppet on strings.

One afternoon he sketches a circus monkey on a bicycle and wonders when he'll get to do something worthwhile.

o.O.0.O.o

(When Steve learns that war is not all glory and pride he looks back to the bitterness from before and scoffs. Why would he wish himself on the front lines? Because even there he's not making much a difference, not when religious buildings are decimated and children cry over corpses on the streets.)

o.O.0.O.o

When Steve and Tony finally meet, it's entirely by accident.

In wake of the September attack on New York and the Pentagon, Tony pledges Stark Industries' resources to the War on Terror. It's a simple thing, really, an easy solution to put SI in the good graces of the people—something the PR department is always encouraging him to do; for a company whose main product is weapons manufacturing there's never a such thing as too much good press.

But standing by the president as he announces that the United States is invading another country apparently means press conferences. Press conferences with the new symbol of the country, one Captain America, AKA Steve Rogers.

Steve and Tony stand on opposite sides of the delegation, only about twenty feet between the two of them, and the tension is palpable. It crackles in the air, as if the force of their bond is sparking at the proximity. They've never been this close before, so they have no way to prepare for how the bond strengthens with the nearness, how it becomes harder to block out the other presence in their minds.

They're studiously ignoring it. So studiously ignoring it, in fact, that each of them can feel the other's intention to block him out like a physical wall barring him from entry. But the wall is still weakened from years ago. Steve can't help but feel Tony's lingering embarrassment, sharp now and renewed tenfold. Against his will Tony senses Steve's restlessness, feeling it flow, electric, through his veins even as he smiles at the cameras and listens to the speech drone on.

But they still don't say anything, not even in the safety of their bond. Because here they're not Tony and Steve, bonds who have barely spoken in years. No, here, right now, on this stage with the cameras and the old men in fancy suits they're Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries and leading financier of the War on Terror, and Captain America, patriot galore and symbol of a hurt people. There's no room for old squabbles or personal embarrassment. It's just them and their jobs, farther apart than ever before even though physically they've never been closer.

It's a hell of a first meeting. They shake hands when the Secretary of State introduces them, smiling like strangers and exchanging pleasantries even as their fingers tingle from the impression of each other's touch.

 _We should talk_ , Tony tells Steve when they're finally released from the mob of press.

 _Probably_ , is Steve's response.

o.O.0.O.o

(And maybe they would have had that talk at some point, but only a year later Tony is on a plane to Afghanistan and from there everything changes.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve doesn't know anything's wrong until he bolts awake screaming.

He thinks it's a nightmare at first, but the tearing feeling continues even as the memory of a hole in his chest, blinding lights in his eyes, the gruesome image of his sternum being plucked from within him like an apple ripe for picking, fades from his mind. The pain lasts for just over ten minutes. Steve lies in bed for the entirety of that time, pinned down by the phantom feeling of someone prying open his chest and reaching deep inside.

When it's finally over, the excruciating pain from before fading to a dull ache, he reaches out to Tony, stretching his mind out, only to find a block in his way. It's not a wall like before, not the solid iron one from years ago, nor the pliant defensive one from recently, but instead a fuzzy blockage, as though someone had shoved cotton balls into Tony's mind, stuffy and viscous and completely impassable.

Steve doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.

At five thirty six exactly—he knows because he's been staring at the clock for the last forty one minutes—Colonel Rhodes calls him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Our convoy in Afghanistan was hit. Tony was taken. We're looking for him now, holding out for a ransom, but I thought you should know."

The words hit Steve and bounce right back off. Tony. Captured. Afghanistan. He refuses to process it; that would make it more real. Even as his brain is adding up the ache in his chest and the cottony feeling and the nightmare, it's pushing it back into a corner of his head.

"Steve?" Rhodes' voice filters to him from where he is still holding the phone to his ear. "Can you tell me anything? Any details about where Tony is being held or what's happening to him?"

Steve's throat works, swallowing several times, before he can answer. "No, the bond is being blocked somehow. There was—earlier I had a nightmare. A terrible pain in my chest, and someone—" he can't get the words to come out "—someone operating on me. My chest still hurts."

Rhodes' voice is soft when he replies. "Okay, okay, that's something. Not a good something, but something." He sighs. "How is it being blocked? Can you describe the feeling to me?"

"I—I don't know, like, like cottony? It's all thick and floaty in his head. I can't get through." Steve runs his free hand through his hair. The feeling from the bond is floating over to him; his head aches. "It's giving me a headache."

"Sounds like drugs," Rhodes mutters, more to himself than to Steve. "But how would they know …?"

"Listen, Colonel," Steve interrupts, "I need to be over there, I—I can help find him, help with the search. I'm stronger now, I won't—" He cuts off. Swallows once. "I can help."

o.O.0.O.o

(It takes Steve a half an hour to convince Rhodes to get him transferred to Afghanistan. He tries not to be resentful; the man has only ever known of Steve when he and Tony were at their worst. But Tony is all Steve has left. He has to find him.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony wakes up in a cave plugged into a car battery and the most alone he's been in his whole life.

Steve is gone. It's the first thing he notices as he blinks groggily into consciousness, even as he registers the water next to him, the wire extending out, the hole in his chest, there's silent panic in his empty mind. Tony tries reaching out, but there's nothing to reach out to, no comforting thrum in the back of his mind, no distant awareness of Steve's feelings or actions. Just the overwhelming absence of the bond.

The other man in the room—Yinsen, he calls himself—explains it to him. "There is shrapnel in your bloodstream," he says. "An electromagnet in your chest," he says. "Drugs to dampen a bond," he says.

A headache presses at his temples and he blinks in the dim light of the cave. The words don't compute. His brain is slow—slow from the drugs and the shock and the wrong that is the lack of a bond in his mind.

The words eventually fall into his head, kickstarting his cobweb-filled brain into action. But still they don't make sense, even as the men with guns storm into the room, as Tony stumbles into putting his hands behind his head, as they demand the missile, the Jericho, as they hold his head under the water again and again until he chokes on it and tastes the acrid tang of bile in the back of his throat.

"No one knew," he tells Yinsen later, after the arc reactor is safely nestled into his chest. The glow casts shadows in the cave that dance across the walls. "Only two people alive besides me and Steve knew. I don't understand how they knew to block the bond."

And Yinsen doesn't look up from the plans that will bring them home, only says, "Maybe that was two people too many."

o.O.0.O.o

(Later, when Tony is lying on the floor of his workshop, his heart ripped out of his chest by one of the few people he's learned to trust, he thinks back to Yinsen's words and wonders at the truth of them.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve has been in Afghanistan for eighty six days when the call comes in.

It's all been a blur of missions, both in search of Tony and in search of peace. The Taliban had been quickly driven out of power, but there are still supporters all over the country, and Al-Qaeda retains a strong hold over much of the area. Steve has been leading units in search of their hideouts, bringing down several key groups.

He's just gotten back to base from one such mission when a young cadet runs up to him with the message. It's from Colonel Rhodes, short and to the point: there's been a possible sighting.

Steve tries not to get his hopes up as he preps for the copter pick-up, pulling on the red, white and blue uniform he couldn't quite abandon upon arriving in Afghanistan. There've been lots of possible sightings since he'd arrived nearly three months ago; all of them have amounted to nothing more than hours wasted scouring the desert and mountains for some sign Tony is still kicking.

Sure, Steve knows, intellectually, that Tony is still alive. The bond ensures it; even with the drugs they're forcing into Tony's system, Steve can feel the cottony sensation he's almost grown accustomed to pushing at the back of his mind, a constant reminder of Tony's presence.

Steve doesn't let himself hope until they see the blip on the top of a sand dune waving at them, shouting audible even over the pounding of the chopper. Or, no, Steve realizes, he's not hearing the shouting out loud, but in his mind, calling to him, his name a prayer, bursting through the clogged bridge of the bond like a trumpet sound.

And when they finally land it's Colonel Rhodes who runs out to greet Tony on the wasteland, because the pain is bursting over the onslaught of unabashed joy and relief and chant of _SteveSteveSteve_ that's barraging his mind. Pain at the sudden reemergence of the bond, and pain beyond that, the scratching of his throat, the throbbing of his calves, and, above all, the sharp ache in his chest where a bright circle of light glows through Tony's shirt.

Steve barely registers the weight falling on top of him that must be Tony, because he can feel the echo of the impact across the bond. He doesn't have time to think that this is only the second time they've physically touched, and never for this long or this much, only reaches an arm around the immobile mass on top of him and lets his mind wash over him.

The rest of the trip is a blur to him. One minute they're flying back to base and the next they're climbing into the back of a limo and Tony's calling for a press conference. Steve keeps an arm on Tony the entire time, only releasing him for a few excruciating moments so either of them can use the bathroom or change.

The ginger-haired woman they're sitting across from in the limo tells Tony to reconsider, to go to the hospital, but Tony plows over her in a way he's always managed, demanding a cheeseburger and a press conference, in that order. Steve doesn't have the mental composure to process the argument, but he knows, in a distant part of his mind—or maybe it's Tony's—that this is Pepper Potts, that she doesn't know about the bond, that the glance in his direction Steve had before thought cursory was more likely suspicious.

He wants to introduce herself, to make a good impression, because this woman is important to Tony, even though he hides that from her and himself in equal parts. But Steve never has the chance, because suddenly they're at the Stark Industries headquarters in LA, and Tony is peeling himself off the leather seats, burger in hand, and walking off towards the glass building. Steve makes to follow, gets as far as climbing out of the car before Tony puts a hand on his chest, says, "Stay here. Happy will bring you to the mansion." And Steve opens his mouth to protest, has the arguments ready on his tongue, but Tony beats him to it. "We can't be seen together," he points out, gesturing to the uniform Steve still hasn't changed out of. "I'll be fine. Don't turn on the news, and don't panic if you get something weird on my end."

"Tony, I—"

"Go." Tony all but shoves him back into the limo, his weakened form barely moving Steve an inch. "I'll. Be. Fine."

And this is the first time Steve has facial cues to read on top of the feelings washing over him through their still-overwhelmed bond, and he sees Tony's desperation, his determination, his inability to accept weakness despite how it's blood-spattered across his face, and gets in the limo.

o.O.0.O.o

(When Steve does hear the news he doesn't know what to think. Tony's always played his cards close to his chest, even when faced with Steve. There are times when he wonders if everyone's not right, if Tony really is just suffering from his own particular brand of PTSD. But then he dives into Tony's mind, feels the guilt there like a physical beast nestled into the grooves of the arc reactor, weapons amassed like candy, the words of a dying doctor, and understands.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony shows Steve the armor.

It's not entirely voluntary, or even really consciously thought out, but Steve wakes up, sees the empty sheets and wanders down to find Tony. And because Jarvis is a traitor he leads Steve down into the workshop just as Tony is putting the finishing touches on the boots.

And, well, it's not like Steve wouldn't have found out eventually, what with the whole "his mind is my mind" thing, but Tony thought "eventually" meant "sometime that's not today," and is wholly unprepared for Steve's mental and audible exclamation when he walks in on Tony hunched over sparking half-formed boots and with a hologram of the rough full model of the armor hovering next to him.

Steve is disapproving when Tony communicates his plans in half garbled words and images and thoughts and ideas sent over the bond, because of course he is, doesn't like the idea of Tony on a battlefield, doesn't like the idea of him in danger, doesn't like the idea of the armor at all, really. But most of that is the newfound soldier in him, and Tony knows Steve is shipping out in a week, max, to go be Captain America again, so he uses that against him, pushes and tweaks and throws Steve's hypocritical arguments back in his face until Steve is storming out of the lab and Tony is fuming.

Steve doesn't bring it up again, turns a blind eye to Tony in the workshop until it's been something like forty hours and demands that Tony come up to eat and sleep. Then they sit on the couch, watching TV, something to catch the both of them up on the three months they missed, carefully avoiding the news and war movies and anything with water, touching shoulders or hands or, sometimes, the entire length of their sides, always touching now, because if they don't the bond might break, shatter between them like glass. And when it becomes too much, their minds melding, blurring the lines between Tony and Steve, both of them having lived so long without the other, they separate. Tony escapes back down into the lab, Steve into the gym Jarvis showed him on his first night here, and the cycle repeats.

This cycle continues for the week Steve's home, interrupted occasionally by Pepper's coming and going, reporting on the disaster that is Stark Industries. But Tony doesn't care about the stock drop or the mad scramble of the board to get him indicted, can't care because someone is selling his weapons to the enemy and the armor is all he can build to stop it.

And then Steve is gone, shipped back across seas because the war needs Captain America more than Tony needs Steve Rogers (which Tony is not entirely convinced of, because the morning after Steve leaves he tries to take a shower and ends up hunched against the wall in the throes of a panic attack as the water sluices over him in a sick rendition of Afghanistan, only brought back by Jarvis shutting off the water and managing to coax him out of it). With Steve gone Tony flies the armor for the first time. He flies too high, but it doesn't matter because it's the first time in a long time he's built something not meant to kill, but to save.

o.O.0.O.o

(When Tony shoots the repulsor for the first time, discovers it works just as well as a weapon as a means to stabilize his flight, he shrugs away the disappointment. It's familiar at this point, anyway.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve hears about the attack on Stark Industries by what the media is calling the Iron Monger almost a month after he gets back to Afghanistan.

He wants desperately to contact Tony and find out what happened, find out what the Iron Monger has to do with Iron Man and the terrifying feeling of Tony's chest being torn open that ripped him out of his sleep around the time of the attack, but the closeness they'd slowly built in the week he'd been back has been erased by necessity. Between the time difference and the constant danger each of them faces on a near daily basis, neither can risk his concentration being broken.

But Colonel Rhodes will bring him updates, sometimes, when he's on this side of the planet, so he knows Tony is alive and mostly well, if subdued. But the colonel won't tell him what happened beyond shaking his head and giving him a cryptic, "Talk to Tony."

So the next time Steve is stateside, nearly four months after the incident, he goes directly to the mansion. It's not until he's standing on the doorstep that he realizes he's perhaps not entirely welcome, that maybe he should have called ahead or _asked_ , at least.

"Captain Rogers," a familiar electronic voice interrupts his thoughts, "If you would let yourself in. Mr. Stark is in the workshop and unlikely to emerge in the near future."

Steve assumes that means he's welcome. "Thanks, Jarvis," he intones as he pushes open the door. When he's put his suitcase in the bedroom and unlaced his heavy boots, he wanders back out into the common area, relearning the place as he goes.

"How long has Tony been in there, Jarvis?"

"Nearly seventeen hours."

Tony's just begun, then. Steve can feel the whirring in the back of his mind again, now that he's home and able to open his mind to it. It's been a long time since he's felt that. Memories of a childhood spent restless because of Tony's constant thinking trickle in, unbidden. They're not unpleasant, but they kick up a wave of nostalgia Steve would rather not address.

So instead he heads to the kitchen. He's no chef, and Tony's kitchen is a far cry from stocked, but Steve manages to scrounge up a box of pasta and a jar of sauce gathering dust in the back of the pantry. There's no bread or butter or cheese, but Steve sets the water to boil when the sauce is warmed up, eases Tony up and out of his single minded engineering with gentle nudges of his mind, and places two heaping plates of pasta and sauce on the counter just as Tony, face streaked with motor oil and eyes manic, finds his way to the kitchen. He squints at Steve like he's not entirely sure he's real, pokes at the pasta warily, then grabs the plate and walks off to the living room without a word. Steve huffs a laugh and follows him.

It's not until they've both finished their meals and are sitting on the couch, television playing in front of them with the sound muted, that Steve asks the question that's been pressing on his mind for the better part of four months.

"What happened that night? With the attack on SI?"

Steve feels rather than sees Tony shut down. He almost expects him to throw up the old walls from so long ago, but Tony just hunches down into himself instead, mumbles a distant, "I don't want to talk about it."

"You don't have to," Steve assures him. "But I don't like when you're hurting, especially when there's something I can do about it." He shrugs. "And, besides, you don't technically have to say anything."

"Exploiting loopholes, Rogers. Very sneaky." Tony smirks, but it doesn't reach his eyes and it falls from his face seconds later. He sighs. "Fine. Yeah, you should—you should know before I fall asleep."

And that is something Steve will address later, because nightmares are something he can understand when some days feel like he's living one.

"It's a bit long-winded," Tony warns him, "so bare with me, yeah?" He squirms slightly in his seat, hesitating, then says a breathy, "Okay, yeah," and shuffles over until he can lean against Steve's side, letting his head fall onto his shoulder and nestling in before letting out a little sigh.

Steve reaches down and entwines his hand with Tony's where it rests on his thigh, heart pounding. Then, before he can say anything, or even brace himself, Tony closes his eyes and the memories flow in.

It's a high-speed stream of data, whipping through too fast for Steve to process and yet all sinking in at once like he's the one who lived them—he's in Afghanistan, giving a presentation on a missile, crouched behind a rock as a bomb explodes in his face, in the dark, hazy images floating around as blood splatters across his vision and his chest is ripped open, held under water as it fills his lungs, watching the arc reactor glow for the first time, talking to a thin wisp of a man over a game of backgammon, storming through the caves in a metal deathtrap hoping, just hoping, baking under the heat of the sun until finally—

And he's back home, with Steve in the lab, on the couch, arguing with Pepper, arguing with Obie, Steve leaving, the terror of falling to the earth, of planes shooting at him thousands of miles away, of discovering the truth, the ransom video, Obie, the betrayal, pain like knives stabbing into him, but not pain like the arc reactor being removed as he watches, paralyzed, the perilous trip to the lab, assembling the armor, facing the Iron Monger, the man who was a father to him, who held him up when everyone else was gone—

The fight, ripping at each other, trying not to hurt the innocents, trying, trying _so_ hard, but collapsing anyway, on the roof, the glass, the reactor, it's the only way, and Pepper's there, and he's in the way, he knows it, but there's nothing to do, he can only tell her to do it, to send him and Obie together to hell—

After, he's survived somehow, and Pepper, everyone knows, the agent, the card, it would be so easy, so easy to retreat, to go back to himself, to go back to being Tony Stark, but he can't, the responsibility, there are too many lies, what would Steve do—

Steve gasps back into the present, bolting up and knocking Tony off in the process. His breathing is labored, air coming in short gasps like it hasn't since his asthma was cured by the serum. Then Tony is there, rubbing circles into his back, telling Steve to breath, exuding calm over the bond, and isn't it ironic that Steve is the one here being comforted when that's what he set out to do for Tony in the first place.

 _I've been dealing with these memories for months_ , Tony says, obviously hearing his comment. _You got them for the first time today._

 _It's a lot to take in_ , Steve replies in his mind, because although he's calmed enough now that he can sit back on the couch, his breathing is still heavy. _How did you do it? You're so strong_.

Tony laughs humorlessly. "I'm not strong," he says aloud. "I'm just good at throwing a punch when I've been backed into a corner." He holds a hand curled against where Steve knows the arc reactor lays.

He reaches a hand out almost subconsciously, aiming for the dim blue of the light under Tony's hand. It's a beautiful creation, Steve thinks, even if its real intention is just to keep Tony's heart beating. But before Steve can reach the reactor Tony skitters backwards off the couch, stumbling into a standing position.

"Hey! Hey, you know—you know what?" he deflects, eyes darting anywhere but to Steve's face. "I've got something to show you in the lab."

Steve wants to push whatever just happened, but goes along with Tony's deflection instead. "What, another upgrade to the armor?"

"No, no, nothing like that, just—come on." He hurries off to the lab, leaving Steve with no choice but to follow.

All thoughts of Tony's reaction earlier disappear when he shows Steve the shield. It's incredibly well balanced and light, practically vibrating in his arms with power. It almost feels alive.

"Vibranium. Rarest metal on Earth," Tony explains. "I needed some to test—well, anyway, I wanted to make you something better than the standard issue firearms the army doles out and I had some lying around and thought about how you, well, _hate_ is such a weak word for your relationship with technology and—voila! Shield!

"Just gotta give it a paintjob and it's good to go," Tony finishes, scanning Steve's face for a reaction.

Steve feels a warmth pool in his stomach. "It's perfect, Tony. Thanks."

o.O.0.O.o

(That shield becomes Steve's symbol, a symbol of him as Captain America, a symbol of him as a protector, and a symbol of him and Tony together, a bond.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve stays at the mansion for a month.

It's long enough that Tony gets used to waking up to him in the morning. He gets used to Steve making the occasional meal and dragging him out of the lab with the promise of said meal sent over the bond, to having Steve's neat freak tendencies transform his living space into a sterile wonderland of bacteria-free surfaces, to his snoring and the charcoal dust everywhere and his ability to always have a hot cup of coffee waiting for Tony on the mornings he actually makes it to bed.

It's becoming a problem, because Tony knows that once Steve leaves Tony will still be expecting these things. Before Steve he had rather low expectations from his life. The bar was generally set at somehow not starving to death or drowning in a pool of caffeine and alcohol before the age of forty. But now it's a much higher bar, a bar that overshoots healthy living conditions and snuggling and just general Steve-ness that's hard to find elsewhere.

Even Pepper notices Tony's attachment—which, he knows, really isn't saying much. He's been procrastinating telling her about the bond, so her suspicions about Steve range from thinking he's Tony's greencard husband to postulating this is Tony's attempt at reenacting _Pretty Woman_. It's hilarious except for how it really, really isn't.

Tony tries not to think about it too much.

Turns out not thinking about it becomes much easier when dying of palladium poisoning.

Tony tries to hide it from Steve, to stow it in the deepest reaches of his mind. But it's near impossible with their recent mental proximity. They've grown comfortable living half in each other's minds; to suddenly throw up a wall between them would raise more alarms than even Tony could deflect.

So when Steve storms down two hours after Jarvis delivers the news, face white as a sheet and anxious panic coming off him in waves, Tony tells Jarvis to turn down the music, closes the plans he has open in front of him, and turns towards Steve with his arms open. It's more of an invitation than he's ever given, and Steve wastes no time in accepting it.

They sit like that for a long time, eventually sinking down to the floor in a puddle of SteveandTony.

"We'll fix this," Steve says when they finally disentangle their limbs and their minds. "We'll find a way, like you did for me."

But Steve is deployed in three days and Tony's been running tests for the past two hours on every known element and not one is a suitable replacement and it looks like forty was optimistic for him; he'll be lucky if he makes thirty five.

o.O.0.O.o

(A day later the summoning for the hearing shows up in the mail. When Tony looks back, he marks this as the beginning of the downward spiral that was that year.

He tries not to look back all that often.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve watches the next month pass from the relative distance of Afghanistan with something bordering on trepidation.

After what happened last time they were distant, Steve keeps a close eye on Tony this time around. He watches as Tony is dying and competent, defending himself as Iron Man through a hearing put together by pretentious assholes who want nothing more than to see Tony crash and burn because of personal vendettas, then as Tony is dying and spiraling out of control, nearly blowing up Monaco then nearly blowing up his own mansion then nearly blowing up the entirety of the Stark Expo.

But then he's not dying and that idiot Hammer is in jail and it's over.

Steve almost breathes a sigh of relief, but a day later a man who introduces himself as Agent Coulson arrives at camp.

 _Do not engage!_ Tony all but shouts over the bond as the man approaches him in the mess one day. But the words are followed by all of Tony's memories of the guy, and they're tinged with a sort of resentful, grudging respect.

The agent tells him about SHIELD, an agency Steve has only heard of through rumors on the battlefield and the filter of Tony's thoughts, and about a plan for a team of people like him, people with extraordinary abilities. Steve is top of their list, he says, set to lead the team.

And yes, Steve has led teams on the warfront, led them into situations he'd never wish to repeat, but there's a difference between tactically arranging men and women in a war against other men and women and leading a gaggle of not-so-men-and-women against forces unimaginable.

"This is merely a theoretical team, at this juncture," Coulson adds as Steve deliberates the information. "The initiative has been benched in light of more … _pressing_ matters."

 _Something to do with New Mexico_ , Tony offers in explanation, which really doesn't help much.

"If we are ever in need of your expertise we'll be in touch," Coulson assures him, smiling in some way Steve is sure is meant to be friendly but really doesn't help to offset the creep factor much. He flies off the next morning, leaving Steve with an armful of files and a bad feeling about the coming months.

o.O.0.O.o

(The bad feeling is only partially warranted, Steve later admits. In the end the team isn't all bad. It's more the formation of the team that causes some issues.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony's moving to New York. It's official. All wrapped up in a bow and put down on legal documentation. Sure, there's a meeting with the mayor of New York that could set back the construction by a few weeks, but overall the plans for the all new Stark tower—grand spanking new headquarters of Stark Industries—are well underway.

It's a clean break for Tony, in a way. California holds bad memories: memories from his childhood and the past year and everything in between. It's about time he got away, and the east coast has always done good things for him. He remembers Boston fondly, if a little blurry through the beer goggles.

But things are looking up now. Tony's got a new gig as consultant for SHIELD, Pepper the CEO is even more efficient than Pepper the PA and has raised SI's stocks by ten points in the last quarter, and the new arc reactor technology gifted to him by his dear old daddy is set to make Stark the only name in clean energy. Steve is even scheduled to come home in two weeks.

It's the happiest Tony's been in a long, long time. Which, of course, means something bad is due to happen any day now.

So it's really no surprise when, just as he's breaking in the new tower's penthouse, Director Fury comes to him with a tablet and as close to an apology as that man has ever given. What Tony at first thinks is just another consulting job becomes so much more, and if the reflection of his thoughts sent back to him a few hours later is any indication, Steve has been brought in, too.

When Tony heads to Germany that night, he knows already that Steve is en route. Their files state only that Steve has a bond to an unknown male. Tony's mentions nothing of a bond; he'd like to keep it that way. So they decide almost nonverbally to continue hiding their bond. They can be friendly, they can interact, because they're supposed to know each other, but hiding the bond is imperative.

So when Tony flies in with his usual grand entrance underscored by AC/DC, he spares Steve no extra attention, except to say, "Well, you're home early."

The bickering, though, is real. Tony can feel his blood running high, like something is egging him on, can feel the echo of that same feeling from Steve. But he's powerless to stop it, so they bicker as they fly Loki to the helicarrier, bicker as Thor becomes their in flight entertainment—and that's an interesting fight; maybe he should have listened to Steve's insistences that they train together—bicker as they discuss Loki's plan, as they discover Fury's hidden weapons.

And then when Dr. Banner is holding the spear, clutching it as green creeps up his neck and into his eyes, understanding dawns in Tony's mind. But it's too little too late, because the helicarrier is being attacked and Tony and Steve are zipping off to fix the damaged engine and most of their communication is nonverbal and they might have to explain how they know what to do without saying it over the comms, but Tony doesn't think about that until after the rotor has chewed him up and spit him out again.

And from there it's a blur because somehow they traded Thor and the Hulk for a formerly brainwashed archer and Romanoff is shaken even if she won't admit it and Coulson's dead and Loki's gone and Tony can't face Steve right now so he flies off as soon as he's sure the others will follow eventually.

Facing off with Loki is terrifying. The battle that follows is worse.

But they fight together as a team, and they fight well, better than Tony ever would have thought. He imagines Nick Fury is probably grinning somewhere, smug that his Avengers Initiative worked out after all.

He and Steve stay separate for most of the battle, Tony keeping to the air and Steve to the ground. It's more logical, and safer for the sake of their secret, but the few times they find themselves together, facing off an army of alien warriors, they become essentially one person. It's not Tony who shoots his repulsors or Steve who reflects them back off his shield to the chitauri, but SteveandTony acting as one being without even having to communicate the thought back and forth, just one body acting as an extension of the other. And that move will be hard to explain later, but in the heat of the battle, with the world falling down around them, they just fight on.

o.O.0.O.o

(Later, in the nightmares, it's not this part that haunts them. No, for the both of them it's the wormhole: for Steve the emptiness in his head, the sheer weight of the certainty that Tony's dead, never coming back, the light of the arc reactor dimming to nothing; for Tony the empty expanse of space collapsing back in on him, choking the air out of him, stuck floating for eternity in the vacuum of space, far enough away that even his firm hold on Steve's mind has been stretched too thin, snapped like a piece of string.

When they remember the Battle of New York, this is what comes to mind.)

o.O.0.O.o

For a few terrifying seconds Tony is dead.

It's the strangest feeling in the world having no one in your brain. Steve has never been alone from the day he was born. Even when the walls were built high and thick between them, there was always that presence there, either the low pulse of another person in the back of his head or even just the wall's existence in the first place, reminding him that, yes, Tony is alive and at least functioning on some level high enough to maintain that wall.

But this, this complete _absence_ of someone in his mind—

Steve can imagine how death in a bond can drive people insane.

And then the Hulk roars and Tony wakes up and starts babbling about shawarma even as Steve's mind is reaching out to his and stretching around it, embracing it as though through sheer force of will it can keep Tony from leaving again.

o.O.0.O.o

(And they do get shawarma, because Tony is nothing if not persuasive. It's some kind of team bonding exercise, even as they sit there in silence and eat their pita-wrapped chicken and take a moment to forget there's a world out there waiting for the saviors of New York.)

o.O.0.O.o

The months after the battle are hectic and mostly a fuzzy blur of reconstruction and speeches and nightmares when Tony looks back at them.

One minute the six of them plus Fury are standing on podiums to receive awards and be lauded by the city and the next they're getting in separate cars and scattering all across the earth—some even farther than that.

Even Steve leaves, driving away on the motorcycle Tony modded for him, only to return a week later with a certificate noting his honorable discharge from the army.

"Fury pulled me aside a few weeks ago," Steve explains. "Said there's a place for me at SHIELD if I want."

Tony digs beneath the words, senses Steve's unspoken reasoning: he wants to stay in New York, to stay with Tony while he oversees the tower's reconstruction and with the city as it rebuilds itself from the bottom up.

So they move into the tower together, into one of the several suites Tony had built into the upper levels after the damage. The penthouse is still under construction, having taken the brunt of the attack, so Tony leaves it for Pepper to have when it's all finished. She always liked the view from the top best anyway.

So they go through a few weeks like this, with Steve shipping off to SHIELD every morning, or sometimes for a few days at a time, and Tony spending most of his time developing the arc reactor technology and attending meetings to try and get his towers spread across the world. A single tower can power a whole city; all he needs to change the world is permission to do it.

But despite living together Tony and Steve don't see each other all that often. And, yes, they're busy, sometimes shut in separate offices in the tower, sometimes stuck in countries thousands of miles apart, but there's something beyond that, too. They're dancing around each other in a strange pattern, interacting enough both in person and through the bond that they're still aware of each other, still know where the other is at most times—because that became a necessity after what happened to Tony during Steve's first tour, a habit they never dropped—still connected as bonds, yet they're pointedly apart, careful not to overstep the delicate boundaries laid in place.

Because they've been sleeping in the same bed for over a year now, living together while Steve's not on tour, sharing brainspace since they were little, but they still haven't even kissed. And, honestly, Tony doesn't know if they ever will. After all the hurt they've caused each other, all the times Tony slept around, all the times they've shut each other out and deliberately defied one another—how can they build a relationship on what they have now?

But the desire is there, and not just on Tony's end. More than once he's caught the tail end of one of Steve's thoughts: the errant whimsy to pull Tony into consciousness with a kiss, the wayward thought of pressing his lips to the sleep-ruffled mess of Tony's hair, the twitching of his hand when Steve wants to reach out and run his fingers delicately over the planes of Tony's cheek. He's caught all this and more, much more, thoughts on the strip of skin between the waistband of Tony's pants and his shirt when he reaches to grab the cereal from the top shelf of the pantry, his lingering gaze on the curve of Tony's ass in a particularly well-tailored suit, color running high on his cheeks in an echo of Steve's.

It's all coming to a head much more quickly than Tony wants. And that's when Convenient Distraction Number One appears. It's Bruce, back in town after a short trip to stalk his old girlfriend—though he'll never admit it—and gather a few lost personal effects. He shows up on Tony's doorstep with a car half-full of everything he owns, asks Tony if he can take him up on checking out the labs at the tower, and never leaves. And, well, that sounds a bit harsh; Bruce would never be so forward. But Tony invites him to stay in one of the many, many guest bedrooms in the upper floors of the tower and essentially manipulates him until he's been there so long that leaving would seem rude.

So Tony and Steve avoiding spending time together turns into Tony and Steve spending as much time with Bruce as the man can stand. Bruce makes a convenient buffer, and if he's curious as to why Steve is already living in the tower, he doesn't voice his concerns.

Another week goes by and suddenly the Avengers are being called back into action. It's nothing like Loki or even the Chitauri, just a rogue experiment gone wrong. Thor is still off-planet, so it's just the five of them together, knocking giant wasps out of the sky like the world's most badass exterminators.

When the fight's over and everyone but Tony is covered in the sticky remains of hundreds of wasps and they're finally released from the debrief from hell, they all go to head back to their respective places of residence to wash off when Tony makes the mistake of asking the terrifying duo, "Where do you guys live, anyway?"

He's expecting some crack comment from Barton about the super secret residences of super secret assassins, but when all he gets is a tired-sounding, "SHIELD barracks," for his efforts, Tony's comeback dies in his throat.

And somehow that turns into Barton and Romanoff moving in the following week. Tony blames his tendency to speak before he thinks and the general disgust that interacting with anyone who willingly lives with SHIELD closer than they have to lends him. Steve just blames Tony.

But having the others in the house does make it easier to avoid each other, even if it also makes it harder to hide the bond, hide how they share the same bed and half the same thoughts. Part of Tony wonders if Natasha, at least, knows. She gets a look, sometimes, when either of them has been particularly transparent, like the day Tony had been coming off a straight forty seven hours in the lab and was sitting in the common kitchen, staring at the coffee pot and weighing the pros and cons of adding a delivery feature to the appliance, when Steve shouted a resounding " _NO, TONY!_ " from the living room. In retrospect Steve had probably been a bit woozy off of Tony's own exhaustion that day and had most likely meant to say that over the bond, but either way it wasn't exactly subtle.

Tony's only hope is that Natasha isn't still reporting on his every move and whim to SHIELD. The only thing worse than the Avengers discovering he and Steve have a bond is SHIELD finding out.

o.O.0.O.o

(As far as worst case scenarios go, Tony's had worse, will have worse. Steve doesn't like those odds, but he can't begrudge Tony the truth in that.)

o.O.0.O.o

Steve doesn't really know how he got here.

Somewhere between being a scrawny boy in Brooklyn and being a not so scrawny soldier in Afghanistan he managed to become the kind of person who can interact with an alien, a gamma radiated scientist, two master assassins, and his genius bond on a daily basis and not even flinch. Except for, of course, when things start to get out of hand. Which, in the tower, is practically every day now.

After Thor moved in about a month ago—and no one really knows why or how that happened; he just showed up one day in a flash of lightning on the landing pad and never left—life in the tower began to pick up a kind of rhythm Steve is starting to get accustomed to. It isn't a steady rhythm, or even a necessarily calm one, but somehow it ends up with Steve nestled against the warmth of Tony's side with Natasha's legs draped across his lap as the end credits of that week's movie roll across the screen.

They've become a family of sorts, one that Steve hasn't had since his mom moved to the hospital full time.

But he knows it can't last, because there's something between him and Tony, still, something that threatens to destroy what little ground they've gained after years of abuse. And part of him wants it, wants to find out what lies beyond those doors, what it would be like to realize the full purpose of a bond, but it's held back by the rest of him, the parts that remember what it was like to feel Tony betray him over and over, to be so completely shut out of someone's life, to be rejected again and again until he was left entirely on his own. And Steve knows, too, that he was just as bad to Tony, that the walls they build were not one-sided, that he blocked Tony out just as often and as much—at times even more so.

So he and Tony avoid being alone if they can, avoid how they can fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed and wake up facing each other, sometimes entangled, other times with just their fingers linked, but touching, always touching. They spend time with the group, meld themselves into the pack like nothing's wrong, lose themselves in movie nights and game nights and family outings that always end in disaster.

But even that turns sour, because the others suspect something, Steve knows. He can tell in Natasha's calculating looks, Bruce's careful avoidances, Clint's comments that sometimes hit too close for comfort. Thor is the only one who seems entirely oblivious, but Steve thinks that's due more to the seeming lack of bonds on Asgard rather than any insult against his intelligence.

Because the team is intelligent, all of them individually and even more so together. They work together well, have from the beginning, even when they were more likely to be fighting each other than the enemy, so the secret of the bond presses down on Steve's mind like a physical being, urging him more every day to tell them, to allow them into the circle of semi-trust that so far is left solely to Steve and Tony, with the occasional visit from Rhodes.

Steve tries to breach the topic with Tony one night when they're lying in bed, but before he can even formulate the thought to send to Tony, the other man blocks him out with the exhaustion he projects over the bond.

But denial can only last so long, and Steve knows it will come to a head some day sooner rather than later.

As predicted, Natasha corners Steve one day on his way back from the gym, following him into the elevator with the calculated ease Steve has come to expect from her. He settles back against the glass wall as it starts to move, letting his hands hang on the towel wrapped around his neck, waiting as she stares at him, considering.

"What is it?" he asks when the sweat trickling down his neck isn't just from the workout.

Natasha blinks at him, innocent, as though she hadn't had an agenda when she followed him in here after clearly having just come down from the common area. "You and Stark sure are close," she comments.

"I guess," Steve hedges.

She waits for a beat, expectant. When he stays silent, she hikes up a single, well-manicured eyebrow.

Steve shrugs one shoulder, his eyes falling on the control panel beside her. "I was the one who found him after he was kidnapped," he explains, even though he knows it's in his file and she's read it. "I spent some time with him after that, helped him recover. We're friends."

"You know you can trust us, right?" Natasha asks in place of a response.

Steve's eyes slip to her face, and he knows immediately that she knows. "I'm not the one you should be telling that."

"Maybe not, but you can talk to him, make him listen."

"I've tried. He blocks me out." Steve sighs. "There's a lot buried between us, a lot we haven't said."

Natasha's hazel eyes bore into him, and suddenly Steve feels like she's reading his entire life story. It's not an entirely unpleasant feeling.

"Then say it," she says, as if it truly were that simple.

With that the elevator dings to a stop and Steve watches as she walks out the open doors, considering.

 _Then say it_.

o.O.0.O.o

(But Steve has tried this before, been down this road and found himself at detours and roadblocks and walking off of cliffs before he can even see that the road has ended. All the signs are blaring _this way lies danger_ , but being stuck in this rut is worse than trying to fly and falling.)

o.O.0.O.o

Tony watches as Bruce almost drops the tray of samples he's carrying across the lab with speculative eyes. The man may be shaky, may be a little jumpy—as he's got any right to be—but Tony's known him, has worked with him for months now, has learned his ins and outs and his mannerisms in the lab, and has never seen him so unsteady. There's a sort of calm that usually lingers over Bruce. A false one, perhaps, seeing as hiding behind that lined face and curly hair is a monster, but fairly clear and solidified. It's a necessity, Tony supposes, though he wouldn't even begin to understand.

So eyeing Bruce now as he fumbles a test tube and spares glances over at Tony he probably thinks are discrete, Tony knows immediately something is up.

"What," Tony asks, less of a question and more of a demand.

The word makes Bruce jump where he's logging in results, hunching inwards and away from Tony at his back. He shrugs, but Tony just rolls his eyes.

" _What_."

Bruce remains silent for another moment, so long Tony opens his mouth to ask again, when he finally says, "So. You and Steve."

Then it's Tony who fumbles the glassware in his hands, sending it shattering on the ground. "Uh?" is Tony's intelligent response as he eyes the damage. Bruce turns towards him then, and that flinch might be guilt, but the slight uptick of his mouth gives off the aura of success.

"You," Bruce repeats himself, "and Steve. You're, uh, you're pretty close."

Tony blinks, because this conversation is not going how he thought it would. "Not really. I mean. I've known him for a few years. We're friends. Whatever." He bends down to begin picking up the pieces of glass scattered around him. He gathers them in his hand, winces when one nicks his finger and draws a pinprick of blood.

"Are you?" Bruce asks. "Friends, I mean?"

"What?" Tony glances up at him from where he's assessing the cut. It's already stopped its sluggish bleeding, so he reaches to continue where he left off. "Yeah, of course."

"You just seem to be, ah, avoiding each other," Bruce comments, handing Tony a hand broom and dustpan. Tony doesn't know why he keeps the cleaning supplies in the lab when there are people who come to the tower three times a week specifically to clean, but he figures it's a symptom of Bruce growing up normal.

"Avoiding? Me and Steve? No way, nope, we are besties, Brucie, don't you worry about it," Tony says, sweeping up the glass shards too small to pick up.

If the thinning of Bruce's lips is anything to go by, he isn't convinced. "I'm not trying to accuse you of anything," he insists, holding his hands up in surrender. "I just think you guys should talk, is all. There seems to be a lot of history between you two."

"Well seeing as we're both very prominently featured in history books, I guess that's true—"

"You know what I mean, Tony."

And he grumbles, but Bruce doesn't stop there, nudging at Tony every chance he gets to talk to Steve, giving him significant looks when one or both of them acts strangely, until finally Tony assures Bruce he'll bring it up, even if he claims he doesn't know what the other man is talking about.

But, honestly, it's quite obvious what Bruce is seeing. Tony's been seeing it for months. He sees it in his careful reluctance to meet Steve's eyes, in the calculated space he and Steve create for themselves in their minds, in the way one or both will leave the room before it can be just the two of them alone. Tony would have thought it could go on forever like this—he's always been very good at avoidance, even better at faking his way through uncomfortable situations—but it turns out there is a breaking point. And that breaking point, this time around, is Bruce.

o.O.0.O.o

(It's less of a breaking point and more a sigh of relief, once it's all over and done with. Their whole lives, the reason they were bonded from birth to begin with, leading up to this point, all the hardship and pain, both from the world and each other, worth it for this one breath of relief in each other's arms.)

o.O.0.O.o

Despite Steve's conviction to make Tony sit down and listen to him no matter what he tries to do to block him out, it's Tony who approaches him one night.

It's been a long week, a series of attacks each more convoluted and ridiculous than the last leaving them exhausted and very likely to pull the covers over their heads and avoid another alarm. So it's a surprise when Tony doesn't collapse asleep on his side of their shared bed but instead sits down delicately and tells Steve they should talk.

And Steve can't say no to that, not when he's been working up the nerve and energy to tell Tony the same thing for the better part of two weeks.

But "talking" turns out to be less talking and more them lying together on the bed, side by side, not touching, not physically, at least, but mentally bulldozing over the last of the barricades between them. It's simpler this way, more economic. Neither of them is particularly good with words; Tony has too many of them and Steve not nearly enough, sometimes, so rather than allow themselves to get tangled in a web of lies and excuses and attempts to explain the unexplainable, they lie back and let the bond take care of it.

When the last of the walls between them collapses it's like the sweet relief of an inhaler as his throat closes like the sudden stability of an embrace during an anxiety attack, unclogging the way for feelings past and present and some in between some lingering and never quite leaving but never quite staying either to come streaming in blurring the lines between SteveandTonyandTonyandSteve and was there ever really a difference?

Because Steve is nine and doing trigonometry in a notebook and twelve and wheezing on his bed and three and opening presents alone on Christmas morning and twenty and sketching sketching sketching because it's all he can do and sixteen and drunkenly dancing with some girl and twenty six and watching the metal doors of the capsule close over him and twenty eight and curling into a ball under the spray of his shower because all he can remember is the water being forced up his nose and down his throat in an acrid burn.

And Steve is experiencing the sharp pang of rejection and the hazy ache of disappointment, the loneliness like a beast in his chest and the crush of a crowd bearing down on all sides, the monotony of day to day life and the startling excitement of battle. It's all hitting him at once like a flurry of bullets on the warfront like the sudden nausea of waking up hungover and sinking in slowly, slotting into place piece by piece until it forms a picture worth observing for hours a building engineered to perfection.

Someone reaches out doesn't matter who maybe it's both of them at once but their hands touch and their fingers lace together and they turn to face each other and Steve is staring at eyes so bright blue they may as well be a reflection of the sky and eyes a deep and warm brown like maple syrup and honey and chocolate melted together and as one they smile.

They stay like that for a long time, just letting the pulse of memories and emotions and _love_ , deep, unconditional love, the kind that can only come from bearing your whole soul to another, echo back and forth between them, long enough that the sun that had just begun sinking below the horizon has long since set and welcomed the stars and moon to shine brightly below, when they finally emerge into their own minds, carefully extrapolating what belongs to whom and putting every little bit, every memory and trait and feeling, into its own place.

And when it's all over, when everything has been meticulously filed away into little boxes labeled _Steve_ or _Tony_ or, in some occasions, a mess of both names together, a mangled _SteveandTony_ , they sit facing each other on the bed and slowly inch into the physical space between them until it matches their new mental proximity.

It's a little daunting, more than a little terrifying, but Steve has seen all of Tony, seen the love and the hate and everything in between, and he knows they can make it together.

When they lean forward those extra few inches the press of their lips echoes across the bond like a promise.


End file.
